The college football preseason AP Top 25 has been released. While these rankings carry some weight early on, they ultimately don’t mean much as only time and actual games will determine which teams really deserve to be ranked.
BREAKING: Preseason College Football AP Poll🚨https://t.co/O9s1jHORyn pic.twitter.com/reBHuc3tL8
— On3 (@On3sports) August 11, 2025
Every year, we see several teams begin the season with high hopes, but fall short of their expectations, and vice versa. Just last season, programs such as Florida State, Michigan, Utah, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, USC, and Arizona began the year ranked but finished well outside the Top 25. With that in mind, here are five teams from this year’s AP Preseason Top 25 that I believe could finish the season unranked.
The Big 12 is an absolute madhouse where anything can happen, and nothing exemplifies that better than Arizona State going from last in the preseason conference polls to winning the conference last season. I would not be surprised to see the opposite happen this year, with ASU having a disappointing season. They may not lose a ton of games, but even a couple of missteps could leave them outside of the Top 25. Yes the Sun Devils do return more starters than any other team in college football, but Cam Skattebo carried them at times last season.
When looking into this subject, I also like to think of the mentality of a team, and there is a big difference in mentality between being the underdog with nothing to lose and being the team coming off a championship with a ton of hype.
I believe the preseason hype surrounding Illinois has gotten a bit out of hand. Many are comparing this year’s Fighting Illini team to what Indiana was last season, but that comparison doesn’t really make sense considering the Hoosiers entered last season as a complete unknown, while Illinois heads into 2025 with a ton of hype.
Their schedule now appears very easy with the only game they will likely be underdogs in being against Ohio State, but that also means one or two other losses could leave them without any quality wins and ultimately on the outside of the Top 25 by season’s end.
It’s hard to believe that not long ago, Florida fans were looking to run Billy Napier out of town and now here we are with the Gators ranked 15th in the country. That is in large part due to how they finished last season and the leap that DJ Lagway is expected to make in his second year.
That said, play from the end of last season does not always carry over into the following year which we have seen plenty of times before. This can especially be seen in the teams from last year that began ranked and ended up having a disappointing year. As always, the Gators face a tough SEC schedule along with a challenging non-conference slate that I believe could leave them with four losses before the midpoint of the season.
There has not been much buzz surrounding SMU heading into 2025, especially considering they are coming off a College Football Playoff appearance and return both their quarterback and head coach.That lack of hype is justified in my mind though, considering how last season played out as a whole. It’s no secret that SMU faced an extremely soft schedule, and had a terrible performance in the playoff.
The Mustangs return just eight starters from that team and will face a much tougher schedule in 2025 with non-conference matchups against Baylor and TCU, along with ACC games against Clemson, Louisville, and Miami. This team reminds me of Kansas from 2023 to 2024. After a breakout 2023 season, the Jayhawks were expected to have a great year, and there was even talk of Lance Leipold moving on to a bigger job, only for them to finish 5-7. I could see a similar scenario playing out for SMU and Rhett Lashlee in 2025.
This isn’t so much about Oklahoma being a bad or disappointing team, but more about the brutal schedule they have to face in 2025. In just their second year in the SEC, the Sooners will once again be tested week in and week out, as they will face three of the SEC’s projected top four teams.
I am a big believer in quarterback John Mateer and new offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, who came together from Washington State, but based on what we’ve seen so far from Oklahoma in the SEC, it is hard to have much confidence in this Brent Venables-led team. The craziest part is, if the Sooners were still in the Big 12, they would likely be the clear-cut favorite to win that conference.
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