Texas was picked to win the SEC. Why Longhorn fans should root against preseason No. 1 ranking
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People don’t talk about it enough.
It’s something I picked up on a few years ago, and it became the year-round storyline that I couldn’t unsee. To be clear, it’s not that nobody talks about it. Every once in a while, I’ll see someone like Brett McMurphy tweet about it, though I’m pretty sure it was something I made him aware of years ago when I had him on The Saturday Down South Podcast. Whatever the case, it needs to be discussed more as it relates to expectations/curses/all the above in college football.
A preseason No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press Poll has become a death sentence in the last 2 decades. In the last 20 years (2005-24), the preseason AP No. 1 team won a national title once, and it was 2017 Alabama, AKA the team that barely made the Playoff field and needed a historic comeback to beat Georgia in overtime of the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
Are cosmic forces working against the preseason No. 1? Perhaps. A more likely explanation is that in the internet age, it’s perhaps not surprising that being the preseason No. 1 in a sport with an 8-month offseason has proven to be difficult to navigate. And sure, we’re no longer living in a time in which a preseason No. 1 like 2023 Georgia can lose 1 game and miss the Playoff altogether, but that’s too lopsided of a stat not to talk about.
It made me wonder about how it relates to Texas. The Longhorns were the media pick to win the SEC Championship. In the last 4 years, the media’s preseason SEC Championship pick was also the preseason No. 1 in the AP Poll, which will be released in August (2021 Alabama, 2022 Alabama, 2023 Georgia and 2024 Georgia all earned that honor). That’s been the case 7 of the last 9 years, and in the 20 years of this trend, the preseason SEC Championship pick also started as the No. 1 team in the AP Poll a total of 11 times.
Here’s perhaps another interesting branch from that stat — because 2017 Alabama didn’t even play for an SEC Championship after the Iron Bowl loss, no SEC team from 2005-24 checked all 4 of these boxes in the same season. In fact, since the SEC Championship became a thing in 1992, no SEC team has checked all 4 of those boxes in the same season:
- Preseason SEC Championship pick
- Preseason No. 1 in AP Poll
- Reach SEC Championship
- Win national championship
Texas already checked one of those boxes. What are the odds that “preseason No. 1 in the AP Poll” is next? It’s fairly likely.
No, that’s not just because of Arch Manning
I sound like a broken record banging the drum for the Texas defense, so apologies if you’ve heard me say this before, but I feel the need to say it again. Texas’s defense is the best returning unit in college football, which is the strongest reason why it could start as the No. 1 team in America. It returns preseason All-Americans at every level in Anthony Hill Jr., Michael Taaffe and Colin Simmons, as well as key 2024 contributors like Malik Muhammad, Trey Moore, Ethan Burke, Jaylon Guilbeau and Liona Lefau.
Mind you, that’s a group that finished No. 3 in scoring defense and will return Pete Kwiatkowski as its defensive coordinator. Nobody else in America is riding consecutive Playoff berths, and the fact that Steve Sarkisian navigated 2 different Power Conferences to get there was all the more impressive.
So yeah, if I had an AP vote, Texas would be my preseason No. 1. In other words, Longhorn fans should be glad that I don’t have an AP vote because of that aforementioned preseason No. 1 curse.
In case you were wondering, preseason teams ranked No. 2-5 won 15 of those 20 national titles from 2005-24, including the 2005 Texas team who started No. 2 in the AP Poll. That’s the spot you want to be, Texas. Don’t lose any sleep if somebody else is the preseason No. 1.
My guess is that Clemson and Penn State will also earn plenty of preseason No. 1 votes with perhaps a few going to Ohio State
Mind you, that would ignore the fact that Clemson went 0-3 vs. the SEC last year (including the Playoff loss at Texas) while Penn State is led by James Franklin, who is 4-20 vs. AP top-10 teams during his time at Penn State.
But I digress.
Ohio State getting some preseason No. 1 votes would make sense on the heels of winning a national title and returning arguably the 2 best players in the sport in Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs. At the same time, the Buckeyes rank No. 101 in FBS in percentage of returning production and they weren’t even the media pick to win the Big Ten. That went to Penn State. For what it’s worth, Penn State was ESPN’s way-too-early No. 1 team with Clemson at No. 2 and Texas at No. 3. If that’s how the preseason AP Poll shakes out, Texas should be ecstatic.
It’s ironic that Texas was responsible for the start of this trend beginning in 2005. That year, of course, USC was searching for a 3-peat and came a Vince Young scramble away from accomplishing that historic feat in one of the great college football games of all-time. No matter where Texas starts in the AP Poll, it won’t be lost on Texas fans that the 2005 season was the last time that the Longhorns were the last team standing. With the questions about the top of the SEC, as well as the relatively unproven contenders who’ll vie for that preseason No. 1 ranking, this could shape up to be Texas’s best chance to get it done since that 2005 team.
I suppose I buried the lead by waiting nearly 1,000 words to mention the other trend that Texas could end. Since the preseason AP Poll became a thing in 1950, Texas never went into a season with a No. 1 ranking. Will history be made in 2025?
Texas had better hope not.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
