Inside the AP Poll: First-year head coaches are making an immediate impact

College football has the longest offseason of any major sport. Those of us who cover the sport spend nearly seven months trying to figure out what we make of coaches, rosters and programs heading into each season.

And then games begin, and our preconceived notions are challenged. We get surprised and find ourselves delighted by the unexpected. As I filled out my AP Top 25 ballot this week, I was struck by how many of the season’s most intriguing teams are not the ones we necessarily expected — because of turnarounds taking place at a much faster pace than anyone imagined they could.

So much of that is due to the immediate impact of first-year head coaches. Look at Florida, which has totally remade itself in Jon Sumrall’s image — tough, physical and smart. Gators offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner runs one of the most creative and entertaining offenses in the sport, featuring arguably the best running back in the country in Jadan Baugh. This Florida team has already matched its win total from the entire 2025 season, and it’s just September. The Gators are a top-10 team for the first time in five years and sure look like the real deal.

(I ranked Florida No. 25 in my preseason poll, lest anyone forget! I wanted to plant a flag and show that I believed in what Sumrall was building. Please clap.)

Takeaways from College Football Week 4: Raiola rises to the occasion; Jeremiah Smith’s Heisman moment?

Week 4 in college football saw Dylan Raiola step up massively for Oregon, Jon Sumrall’s stock soar after Florida’s win at home over Ole Miss and a potential Heisman moment from Jeremiah Smith.

• Nicole Auerbach,

Elsewhere, you see the early success of first-year coaches at UCLA, Oklahoma State and Kentucky — three teams that find themselves ranked this week for the first time this season. For the record, I have been ranking Oklahoma State for a few weeks and Kentucky since its win over Texas A&M on the road, so my fellow voters are a little late to the party. But I’m glad they’re here; these are teams that deserve to be recognized for delivering some of the most impressive wins of the young season.

Bob Chesney’s UCLA squad has three wins over Power 4 teams, with two of those victories coming on the road. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A former James Madison coach takes a bunch of his assistants and players with him to a Big Ten school and finds immediate success. Yep, it sure looks like the Curt Cignetti model. Or maybe we should call it the JMU playbook at this point?

Eric Morris did something similar in Stillwater. He brought 21 players who had previously played for him at North Texas with him to Oklahoma State, including star quarterback Drew Mestemaker (the hero of the Cowboys’ stunning upset of Oregon). That helped fast-track the rebuild there, too.

We don’t know if these teams are going to contend for conference titles or College Football Playoff spots come December. But we know they are writing some of the most interesting stories of the season so far, and that’s worth celebrating.

Stray thoughts/observations:

•  Wake Forest has two wins over Power 4 teams on the road, one of them coming against then-No. 16 Louisville. The Deacs’ only loss was a 13-point defeat at the hands of Miami. That game went as well as anyone’s played the ‘Canes so far this year, certainly qualifying as a “good” loss. Wake should be ranked. So should Duke!
• There’s a very good chance that the winner of Friday night’s Pitt-Virginia Tech game is ranked next week. Well, as long as my fellow voters are paying close attention to ACC action — which it doesn’t appear they are.
• I’m much higher on Utah than my peers. If I had to pick a favorite in the Big 12 race right now, I’d take the Utes. They have looked thoroughly dominant in Morgan Scalley’s first season, but people may not realize how good Utah is until it faces Houston on Oct. 24. The Utes are a little out-of-sight, out-of-mind, which is unfortunate.
• I try to use head-to-head results as much as possible when I’m filling out my ballot, and I really did struggle with what to do with Oklahoma State. Oregon’s win over USC gave the Ducks two top-25 wins, which I felt gave them a caliber of resume in a different tier than that of Oklahoma State, even though the Cowboys beat the Ducks back in Week 2. The Cowboys have one top-25 win and a very bad loss (to Tulsa), which is dragging the resume down. I reserve the right to return to the head-to-head result if the resumes become more comparable and the two teams need to be directly compared in the future!