The call to abolish preseason rankings has grown in recent years as college football fans notice how they create a lopsided playing field. And this week’s AP Poll is no exception.
Preseason rankings often give brand-name schools an unfair advantage by the benefit of the doubt, while leaving other teams with a much steeper hill to climb. While the polls aren’t used to decide who gets into the College Football Playoff, they are still huge resources to build narratives that may or may not be true. And in the world of the transfer portal and NIL, when teams can change dramatically from one season to the next, it’s not even that practical anymore.
But despite all the evidence that preseason polls don’t work, they still exist. And they are still used to create an alternate reality to what we actually see on the field. On his YouTube show, new ESPN star Josh Pate outlined the major problems with this week’s AP Poll, where teams haven’t been properly rewarded solely because of where they ranked before the season.
This week’s AP Poll was a wet bag of trash pic.twitter.com/OZdkW8REpE
— Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) September 21, 2026
“We are a quarter of the way through the season now, and people are still clinging to preseason rankings. People are still clinging to what they believed at a pool party or at media days in July,” Pate said.
He then cited Ole Miss as having the best resume so far this season, beating two teams ranked in the Top 16 in LSU and Louisville, but still sitting at #4 in the AP Poll. And to continue the disrespect for the Magnolia State, he cited Mississippi State being behind Texas A&M as the poll’s biggest flaw.
“A&M got embarrassed in their own building yesterday by Kentucky… why is Kentucky behind Texas A&M? They both have losses. Kentucky’s is to #8 Alabama. A&M’s is to literally Kentucky. And Kentucky’s nowhere to be found here, and A&M’s still 23rd. Why? Preseason rankings,” Pate said.
“When you look at where Mississippi State is on this thing right now, that is drugs. That is copious amounts of drug use. To look at the actual results on the field so far this year, I want you to pretend for just a second that Tennessee — I’m not even going to go Georgia or Alabama — take Tennessee and give them Mississippi State’s resume so far; that’s a top five team, as it should be. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Mississippi State’s big crime is that they’re Mississippi State. That’s it. That’s their only crime; that’s all they’re guilty of.”
No logical argument can counter what Josh Pate is saying here. If teams can’t be rewarded for winning on the road against a ranked team, then what’s the point of playing the games at all? Hypotheticals have dominated the college football debate for way too long. At some point, wins and actual resumes have to matter. And if it takes abolishing any polling until the first week of October, then it’s something that should definitely be done.
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