Once August rolls around on the calendar, the big news in the college football world -- other than the growing anticipation and countdown to another season -- is what teams are considered to be the 25 best in the country entering the new season based on the foresight of both the two major preseason polls in the Associated Press Top 25 and Coaches Poll.
Some fans -- mostly of the Crimson and Cream variety -- were naturally upset at Oklahoma being left out of the top 25 of the preseason coaches poll. This week, however, the media brought a smile to the faces of OU football fans, as well as cries of overrated from some critics, by placing the Sooners No. 18 in the AP Top 25.
Preseason rankings are of little meaning for Sooners
There's little question which of the two preseason polls Oklahoma fans liked the best, but the bigger question is: Does it really matter?
In reality, the Sooners received the 26th-most votes in the coaches poll, which left them just outside of the top 25. Would OU fans really have been any happier had the Sooners been No. 24 or 25 in the coaches poll?
The point is, whether Oklahoma is more deserving of a No. 18 ranking or No. 26 actually is of little or no value other than to spark debate and discussion among fans and media types over the two short, anxious weeks leading up to the start of the 2025 college football season. The only thing that truly matters is where you are at the end after all the games are recorded.
No team has ever made the College Football Playoff, won a national championship or a conference title with an 0-0 record. The actual games will determine all of that. Win your games and everything has a way of working itself out.
Other than feel-good value, the virtual irrelevance of preseason rankings is further illustrated in a statistic provided by Brett McMurphy of On3. According to McMurphy, 13 teams in the final AP rankings last season were not in the top 25 to begin the season. Flipping the coin, that means that only a dozen of the 25 teams included in the AP preseason rankings finished the season in the top 25.
Oklahoma fans probably have become quite spoiled over the years, especially since the beginning of the Bob Stoops era in Norman, with the Sooners' almost perennial presence as a top-25 team both to begin and end the season. Until this year, OU had made 25 consecutive appearances in the preseason coaches poll.
The Sooners have been included 67 times in the previous 89 AP preseason polls, 10 times as the top-ranked team. Where it matters most, however, Oklahoma has appeared 62 times in the final AP Top 25.
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