{"id":397585,"date":"2026-08-04T17:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/397585\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T17:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:30:18","slug":"houston-cougars-ranked-no-24-in-preseason-football-coaches-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/397585\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Cougars ranked No. 24 in preseason football coaches poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/sports\/college\/cougars\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Houston Cougars <\/a>are back in the preseason rankings for the first time in four years.<\/p>\n<p>It is only the third preseason ranking for the Cougars since 1992.<\/p>\n<p>The Cougars are coming off a 10-win season that was capped by a Texas Bowl victory over LSU. Led by quarterback Conner Weigman and receiver Amare Thomas, UH enters this season among the top Big 12 contenders.<\/p>\n<p>Big 12 teams joining UH in the preseason poll include defending conference champion Texas Tech at No. 12, followed by No. 15 BYU and No. 21 Utah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ohio State was the preseason No. 1, receiving 38 of a possible 72 first-place votes from a panel of\u00a0AFCA-member FBS head coaches. \u00a0Oregon was second, followed by Georgia, Texas and Notre Dame.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Defending national champion Indiana was sixth, followed by Miami, Texas A&amp;M, Oklahoma and Mississippi to round out the top 10.<\/p>\n<p>The six top teams in the poll all received first-place votes.<\/p>\n<p>UH opens the season Sept. 5 against Oregon State at TDECU Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Cougars are back in the preseason rankings for the first time in four years. It is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-397585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}