TCU, Baylor debut in top five of preseason AP poll

When the AP Top 25 preseason poll was released on Sunday, Alabama checked in at #3 behind Ohio State and TCU respectively.

TCU was second adopted by Alabama, Baylor and Michigan State to spherical out the highest 5.

That team, fittingly, is the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes.

With two Big 12 representatives in the top five, the second-ranked Horned Frogs and No. 4 Bears are close again and both have their best preseason rankings. With the overwhelming lead they hold in the early polls, anything but a buck of that trend will be a tremendous failure for the Ohio State program. According to Cecil Hurt of the Tuscaloosa News, this was the first time since the AP began a preseason poll (1950) that one of Florida, Texas or Nebraska didn’t make it.

Florida State is No. 10 in the Associated Press preseason poll. It marked the fourth time the Sooners have been ranked out of the AP’s preseason top 10 in Bob Stoops’ 17-season coaching tenure. Ohio State opens the season as the top team for the first time since 2006. This season, they’ll start in the top five, as well.

Some other notable schools in the 2015 preseason AP Poll are No. 11 Notre Dame, No. 14 LSU, No. 20 Wisconsin, No. 21 Stanford, and No. 23 Boise State. The Bulldogs offense averaged 37 points a game behind Heisman candidate quarterback Dak Prescott, who returns to Starkville this season following offseason hype that included a Sports Illustrated cover. Head coach Urban Meyer has said he will not announce the Buckeyes’ starter (either J.T. Barrett or Cardale Jones) before their September 7 opener at Virginia Tech. The Tigers finished No. 12 that year.

The Buckeyes have also been ranked in the top ten by the AP in ten of the last 13 years.