How Reliable Is Texas Tech’s No. 12 Preseason AP Ranking?

Hopes are high for the Texas Tech Red Raiders this year.

I suppose I should say “higher,” because we always have high hopes for the Red Raiders.

This year, though, those hopes are built on a very solid foundation. Let’s start with the fact that the Red Raiders just landed the No. 12 spot in the Associated Press preseason Top 25. Even better, Texas Tech is the highest-ranked Big 12 team in the poll, ahead of BYU, Utah and Houston.

Despite all of the preseason Raider-bashing, the talk about Texas Tech being college football’s new villains and the general controversy surrounding the program, the national expectations are pretty clear. Texas Tech should absolutely be in the fight for another Big 12 title, and a return trip to the College Football Playoff is a very realistic goal.

Being ranked No. 12, however, is no guarantee of success.

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How Much Can We Trust The AP Poll?

Last year is a pretty good warning against taking preseason rankings too seriously. According to the Associated Press itself, 11 of the 25 teams in the 2025 preseason poll finished the season completely unranked. Penn State started No. 2, Clemson was No. 4 and LSU was No. 9, and all three were gone from the final Top 25.

Still, the preseason poll isn’t meaningless.

An NCAA.com analysis looked at the preseason and final AP polls from 2010 through 2019. Of the 250 teams ranked during those 10 preseason polls, 156 were still ranked at the end of the season. That works out to 62.4 percent.

That tells me the AP voters are pretty good at identifying the general group of teams that should be good, but predicting exactly where those teams will finish is another matter entirely. There is going to be plenty of churn between August and January.

For Texas Tech, No. 12 is still a big deal.

In fact, it ties the Red Raiders’ highest preseason AP ranking since 1977. That year, Tech opened all the way up at No. 8. The 2008 Red Raiders also started at No. 12 before eventually climbing all the way to No. 2 during that unforgettable season.

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So what does all of this mean?

It means nobody should start printing playoff tickets just yet, but this isn’t just Lubbock drinking its own Kool-Aid, either. National college football writers see Texas Tech as one of the better teams in the country and the top team in the Big 12 entering the season.

The preseason poll may be imperfect, but No. 12 is a pretty good place to start.

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And if the Red Raiders live up to even most of that expectation, the smart money says we’ll be talking about Texas Tech deep into the postseason.