There may not be a better season than 2026 to exemplify the problems with preseason polls in college football.
The advent of NIL and the transfer portal has already made gauging the “best” teams in early August nearly impossible, and as the jaw-dropping 2025 Indiana Hoosiers championship season demonstrated, the modern era has created more surprise teams than in the past.
Preseason polls then, despite being a part of the college football process for years, are less useful than ever before. And one prominent offensive coordinator thinks we should get rid of them entirely. He’s probably right.
Miami Hurricanes OC Shannon Dawson recently addressed the preseason polls, specifically addressing how they consistently seemingly favor one specific conference. A conference that already more often than not gets the benefit of the doubt from poll voters.
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“First of all, there should be no such thing as preseason rankings,” Dawson said during a press conference. “That’s the most ridiculous thing on the planet. That is the stupidest thing, because people weigh those things way heavier than they should.
“You shouldn’t have a ranking until October. How do you know? (Texas) A&M was ranked in the top-five, but how does that look right now? If anything, it isn’t predictable for the future, it’s the past. Go look at the top-10 last year. I did. Five of them weren’t even in the (end of season) top-25.”
It’s impossible to argue with that, because it’s true. And despite A&M, and others, looking far worse than their preseason expectations, the first few weeks of games and rankings reflect that initial set. Texas A&M loses to LSU, which must mean LSU is good, because A&M was a preseason top-5 team. Missouri was ranked in the preseason, for some reason, which must mean Mississippi State is also good, because they beat a preseason top-25 team.
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Obviously the preseason poll doesn’t only affect one conference; Big Ten teams like Michigan, Penn State and Washington have looked far worse than preseason polls suggested. On the other hand, though, Nebraska and Wake Forest have received little attention and respect from voters, despite deserving it, because they didn’t start the year in the top-25.
Dawson continued, specifically calling out the SEC and how those teams fluctuate from week-to-week.
“So we sit here and look at schedules, and obviously everything is SEC, SEC. Well look… they have all of their teams in the top-25. Guess what. Good for you. At the end of the year, half of them won’t be in the top-30. That’s just the way it is. We can’t sit here and say, ‘hey, we play X number of top-25 teams’. We don’t know that. We’ll count those chips up at the end of the year.
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“That’s why there shouldn’t be rankings, because you give people talking points that are idiots. They don’t know what they’re doing. Play the game. Play every week.”
It’s like Dawson’s been reading a certain OutKick writer’s columns complaining about the polls each week. Ahem.
Voters are humans, and humans are biased. They don’t always watch all the games, and some have even forgotten to rank elite teams like Miami periodically. Some, like ESPN’s Heather Dinich, post about the importance of winning “SEC road games,” as if that some sort of remarkable achievement. Her specific example, Kentucky, beat a bad Texas A&M team and a bad South Carolina team. Great, so what? Why should that be rewarded by placing the Wildcats at No. 17, just because it’s the SEC and those teams have big stadiums?
At the end of the day, using a blend of analytics and efficiency driven rankings would lead to a better result than trusting voters. Especially before anyone’s even seen teams play on the field. But because there are vested interests who want preseason polls to continue, they will. Many valuable college football traditions have gone by the wayside in the modern game, but somehow not that one.
