My New Year's Wish: The 2026 AP Preseason Football Poll will stop the anti-BYU bias and pro-blueblood favoritism

The feelings of educated BYU football fans toward the College Football Playoff selection committee and its media overlord, ESPN, range somewhere between bewilderment, frustration, and outright anger.

But the frustration emanating from Provo shouldn't begin at the end of the season when the CFP and ESPN predictably collude to exclude the Cougars from the playoffs. The outrage should begin before the season even kicks off when the massively biased AP Preseason Poll is released.

Simply put, the AP Preseason Poll is biased against BYU like no other school.

Based on research from the X account Cougar Stats, no team has begun the season outside the AP Preseason Poll only to finished ranked at the end of the year more often than BYU. This dynamic of under-ranking the Cougars has happened 14 times in the last 51 years (including 2025):

And that chronic underrating of BYU matters, big time.

The AP Preseason Poll is massively important in setting the tone for the entire college football season. Before snaps are even played, it segregates the cool kids from the nerds, the haves from the have-nots. It allows ESPN and the SEC/Big Ten propaganda machine to focus on overrated teams in the "Big Two" conferences from Week 0 while pretending most of the rest of the college football world, BYU included, is nothing more than an annoying afterthought.

This propensity for the AP Preseason Poll to overrate SEC teams, in particular, allows schools in that conference to rack up "big wins" and "quality losses" early in the season against blueblood schools ranked in the Top 25 who aren't really that good.

Take, for example, Tennessee. The Volunteers went 8-5 and didn't recorded a single win against a team with a winning record. Despite this pedestrian record, Tennessee began the season ranked No. 24, spent 14 straight weeks ranked in the Top 25, and rose as high as No. 11. Among their losses were to Alabama and Oklahoma, and those "big wins" against a ranked Tennessee helped strengthen their resumes for eventual spots in the CFP.

When BYU and other non-bluebloods start the year outside of the AP Poll Top 25 their season becomes an uphill slog for relevance and credibility. Their degree of difficulty in elbowing their way into national CFP discussions becomes ridiculously hard. When the AP Preseason Poll excludes deserving teams like BYU, they make them "guilty until proven innocent", and proving that innocence often requires near perfect seasons.

Every time BYU gets shafted by the AP Preseason Poll it means some other team is being overrated to start the season. Here are four legacy blueblood programs that are often the recipients of BYU's misfortunes. While Cougar Stats on X looked at the last 51 seasons, I'll just analyze the last 16 seasons, from 2010 through the current 2025 season.

Texas A&M Aggies

10 seasons ranked in AP Preseason Poll, 6 seasons finished ranked

No team has benefitted more from the blueblood bias of the AP Preseason Poll than Texas A&M. Going back to 2010 they have started the season ranked 10 times and will finish ranked six times, including 2025.

This includes a ridiculous stretch between 2019 and 2025 where the Aggies were ranked all seven seasons in the AP Preseason Poll and finished ranked twice. Texas A&M ended the year outside of the Top 25 during this stretch despite starting ranked No. 12 in 2019, No. 6 in 2021, and No. 6 in 2022.

USC Trojans

14 seasons ranked in AP Preseason Poll, 8 seasons finished ranked

AP Poll voters love them some USC Trojans! Over the last 16 seasons, AP voters have included USC in the Preseason Poll 14 times, almost as though being ranked in the Trojans' birthright. USC has ended the season ranked on eight of those occasions, including 2025, as they will finish this season ranked.

What's more incredible is that since 2010 USC has begun the season ranked in the Top 15 and finished unranked six times! Despite being ranked in the Top 15 in those six seasons (2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021, 2023), USC went a combined 40-37 while finishing unranked.

Florida Gators

10 seasons ranked in AP Preseason Poll, 6 seasons finished ranked

Another SEC blueblood that has started the season ranked 10 times since 2010 to only finish ranked six times is Florida. The last two times the Gators began ranked in the AP Preseason Poll were 2021 at No. 13 and the 2025 season at No. 15. They combined to go 4-12 in SEC play in those two seasons.

Florida also has two seasons since 2010 in which they started ranked in the Top 10 -- No. 4 in 2010 and No. 10 in 2013 -- only to finish the year unranked.

Wisconsin Badgers

13 seasons ranked in AP Preseason Poll, 7 seasons finished ranked

While the bloom has fallen off Wisconsin's rose over the last several years, they have been a "blueblood" since the mid-1990s. Since 2010 Wisconsin has been included in the AP Preseason Poll 13 times, putting them in the same "birthright" stratosphere as USC.

What's more, between 2018 and 2023 the Badgers were ranked in the Top 20 in six consecutive seasons and only finished ranked one time, ending No. 11 in 2019.

The anti-BYU bias is real

As Cougar Stats on X points out, no team has been underrated more in the AP Preseason Poll over the last 51 seasons than the BYU Cougars.

This trend has continued in recent years, even after BYU's 2023 inclusion in the Big 12.

Kalani Sitake's team will finish 2025 ranked near the Top 10 after being ranked No. 12 before the Pop Tarts Bowl then beating a ranked Georgia Tech team to finish their impressive 12-2 season.

It will be the fourth time in the last six year the Cougars started unranked in the AP Preseason Poll only to finish in the Top 20, let alone the Top 25. In those four seasons - 2020, 2021, 2024, and 2025 - BYU went a combined 44-8. What more does this program need to do in order for AP Poll voters to give them the respect they should have already earned?

Now, after going 23-4 over their last two Big 12 seasons, BYU had better begin 2026 ranked in the Top 15.

But we can never put anything past AP Poll voters.

If history has taught us nothing else when it comes to preseason rankings, AP Poll voters love them some bluebloods, and in their jaundiced eyes, BYU isn't there yet.