This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/usffan on 2025-07-21 09:39:32+00:00.

The cumulative link to the preseason rankings can be found here.

TCU (high = 15, low = 47) comes in as the #33 team in the countdown and the 9th Big XII team mentioned. If you’ve been reading all of these, you may remember almost a month ago when we got to UNLV that I am using ALL of the preseason rankings, because USA Today’s Paul Myerberg had them in his top 25. That hasn’t been relevant again until today, when two extra polls have TCU in their top 25 as well. Other than tomorrow and Saturday, every other team will be ranked in additional polls, and I’ve been using every one to put together these rankings. CBS Sports has TCU as their #15 team heading into Sonny Dykes 4th season as their head coach. Now 3 seasons removed from making it to the national championship game in his inaugural season, the Horned Frogs are coming off a 9-4 season and New Mexico Bowl win over Louisiana, but still have to be smarting over how two inexplicable home losses to UCF and Houston ruined what really could have been a much better season.

Roster outlook

TCU returns the 49th most production in FBS, but most importantly that includes Josh Hoover, who threw for just shy of 4,000 yards and 27 TDs in Kendal Briles’ air raid offense. They’ll be replacing their primary RB (Cam Cook transferred to Jacksonville State) with Trent Battle, and while leading WR Jack Bech is off to Vegas and the Raiders, they bring back their second leading receiver in Eric McAlister. Dykes brought in the best high school recruiting class in the Big XII (24th nationally), which helped the Frogs have the 3rd best overall class in the conference since the portal class was only good enough for 12th in the Big XII. Those transfers include two projected starting WRs (Houston’s Joseph Manjack IV and Idaho’s Jordan Dwyer) plus Washington State DL Ansel Din-Mbuh.

Schedule and outlook

TCU won’t have to wait long to figure out whether this team has the chance to be special or not. They open up at North Carolina on Labor Day in ESPN’s night game at North Carolina in Bill Belichick’s first game with the Tar Heels. Think there will be a few eyeballs on that one? After a palate cleanser against Abilene Christian (how often have two “XX Christian” teams played in football?) they get the Battle for the Iron Skillet against an SMU team that’s coming off a playoff at-large berth then open up 6 days later at defending Big XII champions Arizona State before welcoming Deion and Colorado to Ft. Worth. That’s 4 high profile games in the first 5 weeks, meaning Dykes will have his hands full making sure the energy remains high. The next 5 games on the schedule (@ Kansas State, Baylor, @ West Virginia, Iowa State and @ BYU) includes 4 teams rated higher than them here before closing out @ Houston and home against Cincinnati. Relatively speaking, the schedule looks a bit too challenging to predict a conference title run, but after last season’s run by Arizona State, nothing’s off the table.