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Is a changing of the guard afoot in college football?
After a dominant three-year run by the Big Ten Conference atop the sport, the SEC is reasserting itself as Texas rose to the top of the new Associated Press Top-25 poll released Sunday afternoon. The Longhorns’ ascendance comes after the team came back from a 23–3 fourth-quarter deficit Saturday night to upset Ohio State, the prior No. 1-ranked team, by a 24–23 score.
The Longhorns, led by star quarterback Arch Manning, are attempting to break the College Football Playoff chokehold the Big Ten has had with Indiana, Ohio State, and Michigan winning the last three national titles.
It’s obviously still very early in the 2026 season, but the Texas victory over Ohio State also reversed a 14–7 loss to the Buckeyes to start the 2025 campaign. With the latest win, the Longhorns recorded the largest fourth-quarter rally ever against a No. 1-ranked team, according to Sportradar.
The Texas-Ohio State game is additionally expected to be one of the most-watched college football broadcasts of the entire regular season. Last year’s edition averaged 16.6 million viewers and was the second-most-watched game of the regular season.
Elsewhere, the Big Ten did claim a high-profile win over the SEC as Michigan beat No. 11 Oklahoma, 17–10, after previously falling out of the Top 25. Following that result, the Wolverines returned to the rankings at No. 19, while the Sooners fell to No. 24.
Ohio State, meanwhile, fell to No. 6 in the last AP poll, marking its first position outside of the top five in two seasons. The Buckeyes held the No. 1 position in every regular-season poll last year. Surprisingly, Ohio State is 1–3 in its last four games dating to last year, though each loss involved a top-10 team.
Southern Powers
The SEC’s Georgia held its position as the No. 2 team, giving the conference a powerful duo atop the rankings, and with No. 7 LSU, No. 8 Ole Miss, No. 9 Texas A&M, and No. 10 Alabama, the conference now has six teams in the poll’s top 10. That also sets the stage for next weekend’s revival of the Ole Miss-LSU rivalry, which will be the first all-top-10 edition of the Magnolia Bowl since 1962.
Lane Kiffin subplots will be heavy in that game, as the Tigers’ coach, having battled the conference and college football at large in recent weeks, previously led the Rebels before leaving late last year in controversial fashion, and will return to Oxford, Mississippi, for a game for the first time since then.
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