The rights, wrongs of the 2022 AP Preseason Top 25 poll

On Monday, the AP Preseason Top 25 poll was released, leaving multiple teams feeling either validated or invalidated. But which ones fall into each category?

The release of the AP Preseason Top 25 is one of college football’s many traditions—but another one is just how wrong each poll typically is. To put things simply, this year’s installment of the poll honored both of the aforementioned rituals beautifully.

Now sure, the poll is bound to get some teams right and some other teams wrong every single season, so to acknowledge such a fact will not result in the end of the world. However, it is important to highlight the mistakes so that they can hopefully not be repeated in the future (stop laughing).

With that said, let’s go ahead and take a look at who all the AP Preseason Top 25 poll ranked adequately.

What the AP poll got right and wrong

In my personal opinion, a team being ranked fairly means that they were ranked within a ballpark of where they deserve to be based on a combination of last season’s performance and expectations for this upcoming season’s performance.

That means that the following teams are ranked somewhere that I believe is relatively fair: Alabama (1st), Georgia (3rd) Utah (7th), Michigan (8th), Oklahoma (9th), North Carolina State (13th), Michigan State (15th), Pittsburgh (17th), Wisconsin (18th), Arkansas (19th), Wake Forest (22nd), Houston (24th), and BYU (25th).

All 13 of the teams that I just listed are deserving of being placed in the general vicinity that they sit in today. And in all seriousness, being able to say that about half of the poll should be seen as a sizable compliment to those at the AP.

To see such a degree of fairness and objectivity shows a respectable lack of bias on their part, with the bias being something that many—myself included—have heavily criticized them for in the past, so good on them.

But, as previously established, it’s impossible to leave everyone happy, and that brings us to who all the AP ranked poorly.

Where did the AP go wrong?

Of the 12 teams that remain to be addressed, there is a rather even split of names placed too high and too low, with only seven of them falling into the former.

The following schools are ones that I felt were placed higher than where they truly belonged: Ohio State (2nd), Clemson (4th), Notre Dame (5th), Texas A&M (6th), Oregon (11th), USC (14th), and Miami (16th).

I feel that those teams while donning potential as they enter this season, are not coming off of showings strong enough to have them ranked where they are today—and again, your ranking should stem from your 2022 expectations being combined with your 2021 performance.

That just leaves the five that were underrated, most namely due to not enough praise being given to them for their outstanding jobs done last season. Those teams are as follows: Baylor (10th), Oklahoma State (12th), Kentucky (20th), Ole Miss (21st), and Cincinnati (23rd).

All five of those powers saw respectable amounts of success last year, as each one of them hit 10 wins or more. Also, all but one of them finished ranked 11th or higher in last season’s final AP poll (with Cincinnati coming off of a CFP appearance).

College football polls will never please all fans, as the definitions of “fair” and “unfair” can vary wildly depending on one’s perspective. However, if the 2022 installment of the AP Preseason Top 25 has half of its rankings right while only five schools sit potentially feeling snubbed, then we could certainly be dealing with worse.