{"id":409651,"date":"2026-08-18T09:32:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/409651\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T09:32:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:32:24","slug":"where-texas-schools-are-ranked-in-associated-press-top-25-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/409651\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Texas schools are ranked in Associated Press top 25 football"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN\u00a0\u2014 Texas<\/a> was ranked fifth in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason football poll, which was released Monday morning.<\/p>\n

One year after being the top-ranked team in the 2025 preseason poll and failing to make the College Football Playoff<\/a> despite a 9-3 regular-season record and three wins over top 10 teams, the Longhorns enter the season with probably their most talented roster in almost 20 years.<\/p>\n

Steve Sarkisian, who has three consecutive double-digit win seasons, begins his sixth season in Austin. Texas has one of its most difficult schedules in history. The Longhorns will play seven of the preseason top 25 teams.<\/p>\n

Ohio State, which just happens to be Texas\u2019 Week 2 opponent in a rematch of last year\u2019s Buckeyes win in Columbus<\/a>, begins the year as the No. 1 team.\u00a0OSU, which got 40 first-place votes,\u00a0is followed in the top five by Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas.<\/p>\n

Other Texas schools in the top 25 are Texas A&M (eighth), Texas Tech (12th),\u00a0SMU (19th) and Houston (23rd).<\/p>\n

The Cougars were No. 24 in the US LBM Coaches Poll<\/a> released in early August. This is their first AP preseason ranking since being 24th 2022 and their highest since 2016 (15th).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want everything at the end of the year,\u201d coach Willie Fritz said. \u201cIt\u2019s a heck of a lot more important than at the beginning of the year. You also want your program to be noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Southeastern Conference has nine ranked teams, but the Big Ten isn\u2019t far behind with eight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the top seven teams, five received first-place votes: Ohio State (40), Oregon (14), Notre Dame (6), Indiana (8) and Miami (1). Voters skipped over No. 3 Georgia and No. 5 Texas, which both fell into the top five but didn\u2019t receive first-place votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN\u00a0\u2014 Texas was ranked fifth in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason football poll, which was released Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-409651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409651","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=409651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}