All 29 teams, one last time — the champ clears the field, and the risers rewrite the preseason board.
Twenty-nine teams, sixteen weeks, one belt — and one board to settle it all, one last time. I want to be honest with you about what this exercise is at the end of a season: it's a formality at the top and a knife fight everywhere else. Let's do the formality first.
Oklahoma is No. 1 because Oklahoma went 16-0 and won a national championship from thirteen points down. That's the whole argument. There is no film session, there is no eye test, there is no "but if they played tomorrow." He has lost one football game in two seasons and it wasn't this season.
Clemson is No. 2, and I need you to understand that being No. 2 in this league is the most painful ranking on the board. LT went 8-0 in the ACC, won his conference final by 21, won a 52-42 shootout and a controlled semifinal in consecutive weeks — and has now finished one game short twice, in two tries, against the same man. Preseason we ranked him 2. Midseason the poll had him 10th. The poll was wrong and the preseason was right, which almost never happens.
Go back to August and enjoy some of these with me.
Arizona State, preseason 26th — "brand new to the league, zero tape, total wild card." The midseason poll had TBO 29th. He then won the Big 12 championship over a 6-0 TCU team and finished 11-3 with a conference trophy. Twenty-ninth to conference champion in six weeks is the single biggest rise in the short history of this exercise, and I'm not sure anything in Season One touches it either.
Notre Dame, preseason 8th — we wrote, and I quote, "twelve and oh means nothing when the record doesn't survive the first cold night." HOWEVA. Tayne's postseason: 62-7, 21-0, and a 63-57 semifinal against the eventual champion. He outscored the playoff 140-70 and went home anyway. The record survived every cold night except the one where both teams agreed defense was optional.
Florida, preseason 18th. Polo beat Alabama, beat Georgia, beat Tennessee, made the quarterfinals, and finishes 5th. That's a thirteen-spot climb earned the hard way — one ranked win at a time.
TCU didn't exist in Season One. KJ walks in, starts 6-0, wins a 57-56 triple-overtime game that people will still be arguing about in Season Ten, and plays for a conference title in his first year. 13th on the final board and the best debut season this league has produced.
Michigan, preseason 3rd. Dre was No. 1 in the country in October. Then Penn State 48-16. Then Ohio State 54-14. He finishes 15th, and those two scorelines are the entire distance between where he started and where he landed.
Texas Tech, preseason 10th. A year ago Silingi won the Big 12. This year: a triple-overtime heartbreak, a 48-11 Clemson game, and 28th on the board — last place in the state of Texas, which has four teams on it.
SMU, preseason 12th. Outscored 190-40 by the four best teams on the schedule. ZBO's season will be remembered for the recruiting drama, and honestly that's the kind remembrance.
Memphis. The computer. 11-3, in the field in both accredited seasons, seeded 12th, gone by sixty-two points in round one. Twenty-nine humans coach in this league and the sim keeps finding room for the one team none of them control. At this point it's not a quirk, it's a tradition.
The belt stays in Norman, outright, two titles in two years, and the preseason No. 1 in Season Three is not a conversation anybody needs to schedule.
But look at the shape of the board underneath him. The four seeds behind Oklahoma — Clemson, Penn State, Notre Dame, Florida — have combined for zero rings and an awful lot of scar tissue. The two best new-program stories in the league, TBO and KJ, both live in the Big 12 and both just played in a conference final. Cell has LSU and a full offseason. Fields Finest takes over Auburn. And eighteen seasons remain on the clock.
Somebody climbs. Somebody always climbs. The rankings reset when the crown is on the line — and now we get to find out who read their own blurb and took it personally.
That's the board. See you in Season Three.
