It’s hard to recall a more impactful offseason in college football than the one we’re facing now. Between the massive conference realignments and the departure of both Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh, the entire college football landscape could change in ways we can’t even fathom.
So with all of the changes that college football has seen since January , it should be no big shock that ESPN has updated their preseason top 25 rankings.
By far the biggest change is Michigan falling out of the top 10 entirely from Mark Schlabach’s newest ESPN ranking . But there were some other big ones too, such as Ohio State rising from fifth to second and Alabama falling from fourth to ninth.
Dropping out of the ranking entirely was Washington, who were ranked No. 11 just 30 days ago. The loss of head coach Kalen DeBoer and the impending departure of star quarterback Michael Penix Jr. makes that a somewhat easy call though.
The entire ESPN top 25 is as follows:
- Georgia
- Ohio State
- Oregon
- Texas
- Notre Dame
- Ole Miss
- Missouri
- Penn State
- Alabama
- Utah
- Arizona
- LSU
- Michigan
- Oklahoma
- Florida State
- Tennessee
- Oklahoma State
- N.C. State
- Clemson
- Kansas State
- Louisville
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Miami
- Texas A&M
On one hand it’s going to feel insanely hard to truly project the upcoming season as massive programs like Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, USC and Washington – just no name a few – enjoy brand new conferences filled with new challenges from logistics to recruiting to the caliber of their opponents.
But on the other hand, the name of the game is simply beating the next team in front of you and it remains to be seen which of the teams on this list are capable of beating one, let alone all of their 2024 opponents.
Do you agree with this ranking?