Scott Van Pelt decries college football preseason rankings in transfer era: ‘You’re selling stories’

There is more player movement in college football these days than in most pro leagues, with huge portions of rosters turning over each summer thanks to less restrictive transfer rules and the allure of NIL money across the country.

Despite the uncertainty around so many teams and how they will install new players, there is no shortage of preseason rankings for college football fans to consume this time of year. These are used as content for shows and writing, as well as to market early-season matchups on television.

Count ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt among those staunchly against the need for preseason rankings in modern college football.

“The point is that you’re selling stories and people and programs right now, in August, without any real knowledge for sure about what’s what,” he said this week on his podcast, SVPod.

Van Pelt’s co-host, “Stanford” Steve Coughlin, echoed the point that it is harder than ever to define teams. Great teams lose top talent to the draft and significant depth to the portal, leaving all but the younger stars to be replaced each offseason. And even some of the highly ranked teams are working in their own transfers at key positions like quarterback.

“This is really a lot harder to prognosticate now what teams are going to be, because you really don’t know,” Coughlin said.

To illustrate the point, Van Pelt recalled the chaos of the 2025-26 season. This time last year, both Clemson and Penn State were sexy preseason picks to potentially compete for a national title, largely due to their holdover quarterbacks. Instead, the champion turned out to be an Indiana squad full of older, more experienced transfers.

Van Pelt also highlighted Arch Manning’s rollercoaster season to show that even plugging in a stud quarterback to a deep roster is no guarantee of success.

“Look at last year as an example of where teams began the season, and rankings, and it will happen again,” Van Pelt said. “Because there will be teams that you just presume are going to be good based on the pedigree of their past, some of the people that you know, looking at the portal acquisitions and thinking, ‘That should work.’ But you don’t know.”

Nobody really expects the AP or coaches’ polls to stop collecting this info, but Van Pelt may have a point: the preseason rankings are less useful than ever before. At least in the past, there was value in the expertise from media members and rival coaches around a team’s underclassmen and key transfers. Now, there is so much uncertainty up and down each roster that it’s nearly impossible to predict who is actually good until the ball is finally snapped.