Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian leads warm ups prior to the Cotton Bowl Classic College Football Playoff semifinal game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Jan. 10, 2025. Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

SEC Daily: Conference Sets New Record as Preseason Top 25 Released

Originally posted on Vanderbilt Commodores on SI
By Graham Baakko | Last updated Aug 14, 2025 12:00 PM ET

The long-awaited preseason AP Top 25 was released earlier this week ahead of the 2025-2026 college football season.

The biggest thing fans noticed? The presence of the Southeastern Conference. The SEC set a record for the most teams in the original AP Top 25 rankings to start a season with 10 of the conference’s 16 teams to be ranked the first week of the season this fall.

The SEC is led by No. 1 Texas, who will travel to Columbus, Ohio to take on No. 3 Ohio State at 11 a.m. CT on Aug. 30 to kick off the first full week of the season. The Longhorns are looking for revenge after falling to the Buckeyes in the semifinals at the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 10. This game is sure to draw all the eyes of the college football world on this game and will spark plenty of conversation about the SEC and the Big Ten one way or another once the game is over.

But that’s just the start of the rankings for the SEC. The conference has three others in the AP Top 10 to start the season in No. 5 Georgia, No. 8 Alabama, who travels to Florida State for its first game, and No. 9 LSU, who travels to No. 4 Clemson in a battle of who the real “Death Valley” is.

LSU and Clemson is another crucial game for the SEC and how fans - and ultimately the College Football Playoff Committee - will view the conference. LSU losing this game could cause uproar from fans labeling the SEC as “overrated.” But if LSU were to win, the preseason rankings of the SEC are justified.

The next-highest SEC ranked team is South Carolina, who despite coming off of a bowl loss to Illinois, returns a quarterback in LaNorris Sellers that is ready to prove they are a playoff-caliber team after falling short a season ago. The Gamecocks start the season with a home game against Virginia Tech, but have six teams on their schedule that are ranked in the preseason AP Top 25, including its in-state rival No. 4 Clemson.

Four SEC teams have to play seven teams ranked in the preseason poll: LSU, Florida, Mississippi State and Oklahoma. Arkansas, Kentucky and South Carolina all play six teams that are ranked heading into the season. Finally, six SEC teams, including Vanderbilt, are slated to play five of their 12 games against preseason ranked opponents: Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Texas, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.

Here is the full preseason AP Top 25 poll.