Ohio State opened No. 1 in the 2026 preseason college football Coaches Poll on Tuesday afternoon, edging Oregon for the top spot and giving the Big Ten the first two places in the country’s opening hierarchy.
The vote gave Ohio State 38 first-place votes, while Oregon got six and opened at No. 2. Texas was No. 3 with seven first-place votes, Georgia was No. 4 with two, and Notre Dame was No. 5 with five. Indiana drew 14 first-place votes, the second-most in the poll, yet still landed at No. 6. For Curt Cignetti, that split was the sharpest reminder that preseason voting often measures how coaches feel about a team’s ceiling as much as where they think it should begin the year.
Indiana’s placement is easier to read in one way than another. The Hoosiers finished 16-0 and watched Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza go No. 1 in the NFL Draft, but the coaches still put five teams ahead of them. That left the poll with Ohio State and Oregon at the top, then Texas, Georgia and Notre Dame before Indiana finally appeared, despite those 14 first-place votes.
The rest of the top 25 showed the same conference weight that usually shapes the first poll of the year. The SEC landed nine teams for the third consecutive season, with Texas A&M at No. 8, Oklahoma at No. 9, Ole Miss at No. 10, Alabama at No. 11, LSU at No. 13, Tennessee at No. 18 and Missouri at No. 25. The Big Ten placed eight teams, including USC at No. 14, Michigan at No. 16, Penn State at No. 17, Washington at No. 19 and Iowa at No. 22. The Big 12 had four teams, while the ACC had three.
That conference spread matters because the Coaches Poll rarely lasts as a forecast. Only 14 preseason top-25 teams were still ranked in the final polls last year, and only 12 teams showed up in both editions during the 2024-25 season. Even so, the opening board still tells you what coaches trust most before a snap is taken. Ohio State has opened in the top five every season since 2015, and a team from the SEC or Clemson had opened at No. 1 in each of the last 10 seasons before this poll. Alabama was the last team to open No. 1 and finish with the College Football Playoff title, back in 2017.
For now, the first answer is Ohio State. The harder one is whether Indiana’s 14 first-place votes are a sign the coaches see a team that should be higher, or just a team they believe will make the ranking look silly by October.
