It looks like the Texas Tech Red Raiders have earned a spot in the preseason Top 25 rankings from the Coaches Poll. And that’s great! Getting in the top 25 is something that is worth enjoying, even if Texas Tech is sitting at No. 24 ahead of the start of the season.
Obviously it’d be great if the Red Raiders were ranked higher, but we’ll take what we can get right now. Especially since the season hasn’t started yet. Texas Tech hasn’t had a chance to show just how good it can be this year.
There are going to be plenty of people with plenty of questions about whether or not Joey McGuire’s team will live up to its theoretical potential.
2025 Preseason Top 25 Coaches Poll rankings
Here’s what the rankings look like ahead of the 2025 college football season:
- Texas Longhorns
- Ohio State Buckeyes
- Penn State Nittany Lions
- Georgia Bulldogs
- Notre Dame Fighting Irish
- Clemson Tigers
- Oregon Ducks
- Alabama Crimson Tide
- LSU Tigers
- Miami Hurricanes
- Arizona State Sun Devils
- Illinois Fighting Illini
- South Carolina Gamecocks
- Michigan Wolverines
- Ole Miss Rebels
- SMU Mustangs
- Florida Gators
- Tennessee Volunteers
- Indiana Hoosiers
- Kansas State Wildcats
- Texas A&M Aggies
- Iowa State Cyclones
- BYU Cougars
- Texas Tech Red Raiders
- Boise State Broncos
Joey McGuire and the Texas Tech Red Raiders face a pretty narrow gap between being ranked and unranked in 2025 preseason Coaches Poll
In addition to the obvious note of Texas Tech getting the No. 24 spot in the preseason coaches poll top 25 rankings, there’s also the fact that the margin between the Red Raiders and the Oklahoma Sooners (who would be No. 26 if this poll continued ranking teams out that way) is a total of 40 points.
That’s more than 39 points! It seems like it might be a lot of points. To help put a few things in perspective, the gap between No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Ohio State is 41 points. The gap between No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Penn State is 40 points. There’s basically 100 points of difference between No. 7 Oregon and No. 8 Alabama.
It’s a pretty small margin. And that’s fine at the end of the day. It’s a preseason poll. The Red Raiders will have a number of opportunities this season to prove themselves and to move up. Still, there’s not much of a margin for error here.