Indiana’s place in the AP preseason Top 25 is history for the program, but it still feels like the Hoosiers got shorted.
Monday’s release of the official AP preseason poll set the table for the new college football season, and Indiana landed at No. 6 - its highest preseason ranking ever. That’s a milestone on its own, because the Hoosiers had never cracked the AP preseason Top 10 before.
But for a team coming off a perfect 16-0 run that ended with a historic National Championship, No. 6 looks awfully modest. Curt Cignetti has gone 27-2 in two seasons in Bloomington, and he’s reloaded the roster with plenty of elite talent for another run. Indiana enters the 2026 campaign among the favorites to win it all again, which is why leaving it out of the Top 5 feels like a head-scratcher.
The top of the poll went Ohio State at No. 1, followed by Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas. Indiana checked in just ahead of Miami (FL) at No. 7 and Texas A&M at No. 8, with Ole Miss and Oklahoma completing the Top 10.
For the reigning national champs, being ranked outside the preseason Top 5 is unusual company. It marks only the third time in the CFP era that the defending champion has opened outside that group.
From an Indiana perspective, the résumé is hard to ignore. Cignetti took over a program that owns the most losses in college football history, and all he’s done is win.
The Hoosiers did lose a lot of big-name talent to the NFL, but Cignetti answered by bringing in the top-ranked portal class in the country. Add in the key returners on both sides of the ball, and there’s a strong case that Indiana has enough talent and experience to start at No.
Instead, the Hoosiers are again in the position of proving themselves. That was the story last year too, when Indiana entered the 2025 season at No. 22 in the AP preseason poll and still kept stacking wins. Even after a breakthrough season and a national title, the respect still stopped short of the very top.
So the ranking is historic, yes. But for a program that just finished perfect and reloaded for another title push, Indiana can reasonably ask the same question again: what more does Cignetti have to do to earn a No. 1 ranking?
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