Joel Klatt wants to ban preseason polls. Or at least he wouldn’t mind if they disappeared.
The Fox college football analyst addressed college football’s preseason ranking problem during his eponymous show this week. Three teams that started the season in the AP Poll’s top four — Texas, Penn State, and Clemson — are now unranked, and their combined record tells the story.
“I mean, we’re 8-7 between those three teams that were in the top-4 of the AP Poll,” Klatt said. “Now everyone’s saying, like, ‘Ban, preseason polls!’ Sure. That’d be fine. I would be totally fine with that. I’ve thought they’ve misled the college football public for a long time. And I actually think that they mislead the committee, which then becomes the de facto college football world in this committee room, as they’re trying to select CFP teams at the end of the year.”
Even if bad teams eventually fade, those preseason rankings don’t.
That’s why Klatt believes preseason polls create artificial narratives that persist long enough to influence the College Football Playoff committee when they evaluate résumés in November and December. A win over a preseason top-10 team carries weight even if that opponent turns out to be mediocre.
“We’re giving them these preconceived notions of what a big win is, what isn’t a big win, and really, we don’t know,” Klatt continued. “We don’t know.”
The transfer portal has made predicting college football nearly impossible. Rosters turn over at rates that would’ve been unthinkable five years ago. Key starters leave for other programs. Portal additions arrive without the benefit of spring practice. Entire position groups can look completely different between bowl season and Week 1. What looked like a national title contender in August can be a middling team by October, and Klatt thinks this season’s collapse of three top-four teams proves preseason rankings are broken.
“It’s harder to predict this sport than ever before because of all the movement we see in the transfer portal,” Klatt said. “And that’s the evidence we see right there: three teams in the top-4, they’re unranked. Other teams in there they’ve fallen way below expectations. Really, the only teams that have exceeded expectations are Miami… maybe Oregon exceeded them, maybe Alabama’s right where we thought they were. I think they started eighth; they’re eighth. We just don’t see these teams that are like, ‘Yep, we knew that was going to be them, and they’re exactly where they’re at.'”
The frustration with preseason polls extends beyond Klatt. Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark eliminated his conference’s preseason poll entirely this year, arguing it hurts teams before they’ve played a game. Several Big Ten coaches have echoed similar concerns, saying August rankings create unfair narratives that follow programs throughout the season.
Klatt has been one of the loudest critics of college football’s polling system. Last season, he blasted AP voters for undervaluing USC, Miami, and Tennessee. He’s called out what he sees as “clear brand bias” when programs like Indiana get overlooked despite winning games. Earlier this season, he ripped the AP Poll as a “joke” after Washington entered a matchup against Ohio State completely unranked despite averaging 58 points per game through its first three games.
Klatt releases his own preseason rankings every year, so he’s not immune to the same problem. His 2025 preseason top 25 had Penn State at No. 1, Texas at No. 2, Ohio State at No. 3, and Clemson at No. 4.
Whether preseason polls disappear remains to be seen. But Klatt’s tired of watching the committee use them as a measuring stick when the portal era has made them essentially worthless.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.