A year after casting a preseason ballot, one Top 25 voter has gone back and graded it, and the results were uneven. Texas, Penn State and Alabama stood out as the biggest misses after the 2025 season settled the rankings.
The review matters now because preseason Poll ballots are built before a snap is played, with returning production and coaching continuity shaping the first judgments. That makes them useful, but also vulnerable to the kind of swings that turned Texas into a 10-3 team that finished No. 12 and left Penn State unranked after a 7-6 season.
The writer is entering his second year voting in the Top 25 after years of overseeing the poll, and he said the preseason exercise is not a straight prediction of the final order. It is a best estimate, built from what a team brings back and how stable its staff looks, then judged later by how close the preseason slot lands to the team’s final spot in the Top 25.
That framework produced a harsh verdict for some teams and a generous one for others. Texas was the clearest miss because the writer had the Longhorns No. 1 in the preseason and still had them in his final top 10, but they finished No. 12 after going 10-3. He also said Texas did not have a compelling case to make the College Football Playoff, which is part of why the preseason belief now looks too aggressive.
Penn State was even harder to square with the finish. The team went 7-6, was left out of the final Top 25, and lost five games by one score, a reminder that a narrow margin can still add up to a full collapse in the standings. In the grading system, that kind of finish drew an F. Alabama landed closer to the middle. The writer had been bullish on the Crimson Tide for most of the season and placed them No. 12 in his final rankings, but they ended No. 9 at 11-4, a result that was better than Penn State’s but still short of the preseason promise.
The strongest grades went to teams that finished almost exactly where a cautious preseason read had put them. Clemson went 12-2 and finished No. 5 in the final Top 25, while Indiana also went 12-2 and finished No. 6. Both earned A grades because the final rankings matched the range implied by the preseason ballot more closely than the bigger swings did. That is the simple math behind the review: the closer the final ranking is to the preseason slot, the better the grade.
For a poll built on judgment, that is the unavoidable test. A ballot can lean on returning production and coaching continuity, but it still has to survive the season, and that is where preseason certainty can crack. Texas and Penn State showed the downside of being too confident, while Clemson and Indiana showed how a measured call can hold up over four months and 138 FBS teams.
The writer will keep voting in the Top 25 next season, and the same question will come back with the first preseason ballot: which teams are really ready to justify the faith placed in them before autumn has even begun?
