The Athletic has published a post-spring 2026 college football preseason top 25 called Man vs. Machine, and Usc is part of the national buzz around the rankings as kickoff moves to within less than 90 days. The exercise puts two different views of the sport side by side: one built by Sam Khan Jr. from roster construction and transfer portal evaluation, the other by analytics expert Austin Mock.
That distinction matters because preseason lists are no longer just about reputation. They are about which teams held talent, which ones added it, and which ones looked strongest once the portal settled after spring. Usc fits into that conversation as one of the programs being watched before the 2026 season, even if the excerpt does not reveal exactly where the Trojans landed in Khan’s top 25. For readers checking early expectations, that missing number is part of the draw.
Khan’s role gives the ranking a specific edge. He covers college football roster construction and the transfer portal, so his board is meant to reflect how a team is built, not just what it did last fall. Mock, The Athletic’s analytics expert, brings the other lens, which can produce a different answer from the same set of teams. That is the point of the comparison: the same roster can look like a contender in one system and merely promising in another.
Monday’s rankings arrived in a busy stretch of preseason evaluation, with Stew Mandel also unveiling his latest top 25 the same day. The broader setup is simple enough. These lists are not game results or transaction reports. They are early national assessments, released before the first snap, and they shape how teams are discussed for weeks. In that setting, Usc matters because it is part of the group drawing attention while the rest of the college football world waits for the season to begin.
The mismatch between a roster-and-portal ranking and a statistical projection model is where the real value sits. One method can reward experience, incoming talent and the feel of a team’s rebuild. The other can weight efficiency and historical output differently, and that can move a school up or down in ways fans do not always expect. For Usc and the rest of the top 25, the lesson is that preseason confidence depends on who is doing the measuring.
What comes next is not another ranking exercise but the season itself. Once the 2026 college football schedule starts, those early arguments about Usc, the portal and the top 25 will either look sharp or dated. Until then, the number that still matters most is the one missing from the excerpt: where Khan placed the Trojans when he sat down to sort the field.
