College football rankings: Texas leads the way, Penn State tops Ohio State in preseason CBS Sports 136
College football rankings: Texas leads the way, Penn State tops Ohio State in preseason CBS Sports 136
Preseason college football rankings have always been a challenging exercise, but never has it been more of a guessing game than the modern era.
Massive roster turnover through the transfer portal and the annual musical chairs at the quarterback position have brought uncertainty to some of the more traditional methods of ranking teams, forcing college football experts to dig deeper to formulate opinions on how these teams stack up against each other before the first kickoff of the season.
Luckily, our CBS Sports 136 voters are willing to do that work, ranking not only a top 25 — like those other polls — but stacking the entire FBS landscape against each other.
As we cycle back for another season, we here at CBS Sports and 247Sports welcome Delaware and Missouri State to the list as our ballot grows from 134 teams to 136 teams.
In terms of the top of the rankings, the CBS Sports 136 is in line with the Coaches Poll in naming Texas as the No. 1 team. The Longhorns were a top-four team at the end of last year and boast one of the most talented rosters in the country.
Texas has been so consistent the last two seasons that we’re not even talking about the Longhorns being “back.” Those jokes are long gone because Texas is “here,” and it’s time for the Arch Manning era to begin.
Where the CBS Sports 136 strays from the Coaches Poll, and even the oddsmakers, is having Penn State, not Ohio State, at No. 2. The Nittany Lions are loaded up with returning stars from a team that also made it to the CFP semifinals a year ago, and with multiple players turning down the NFL Draft, they have the same kind of unified veteran movement that recent champions like 2023 Michigan and 2024 Ohio State had going into their trophy-claiming seasons. Now, the Buckeyes are not far back, checking in at No. 3, with some voters favoring Ohio State to Penn State even if that did not come through as the consensus.
Speaking of consensus, it gets even more difficult to find real consensus the closer you get to the edge of the top 10 and certainly within the rest of the top 30. Teams coming off CFP appearances like Clemson, Georgia, Notre Dame, Oregon and Arizona State were easy picks to push to the top of a ballot, joining talent-laden teams like Alabama and LSU that fell short of expectations a year ago.
