How Will Indiana's Preseason AP Ranking Compare to Past Defending National Champions?

The only guarantee for Indiana's 2026 season is that it'll begin in a better spot than any other in its history. That's not saying much about a program with just four preseason Associated Press Top 25 rankings since its inception in 1950.

But the safe bet is that the defending champs will be a preseason top-10 team for the first time ever, and perhaps even a top-5 ranking is in the cards.

What does history suggest would be disrespectful for the defending champs?

Indiana will almost certainly not start where it finished the 2025 season, which is probably a good thing when you consider that only one preseason AP No. 1 team has gone on to win a national title in the last 21 seasons (2017 Alabama).

What's interesting to note is how many times in the 21st century we watched the defending champs start as top-4 teams the following season. Of those 25 defending champs, 19 of them started the following season as a top-4 team in the preseason AP Poll.

The six who missed that group were 2007 Florida (preseason No. 6), 2008 LSU (No. 7), 2011 Auburn (No. 23), 2017 Clemson (No. 5), 2020 LSU (No. 6) and 2024 Michigan (No. 9).

History says that when there's preseason skepticism for defending champs, it's usually warranted. Among those six teams, five of them lost at least four games and four of them lost five games.

The outlier was 2017 Clemson, who earned the No. 1 overall seed in the Playoff field, but then got blown out by Alabama in the semifinals.

Think about that, though.

The six defending champs who failed to earn a top-4 ranking the following season averaged 4.3 losses, and 2017 Clemson was the only one who out-performed that preseason ranking with a higher spot in the final AP Poll (No. 5 in the preseason poll and No. 4 in the final poll).

Does that mean an IU team that starts off outside the top 4 is doomed? Not necessarily.

That stat might take on new life in the NIL/portal era

As in, the era wherein defending national champs can reload by convincing more boosters than ever to donate money to secure coveted transfers. IU is, in some ways, reaping the benefits of that for the first time with someone like Nick Marsh.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, a player of Marsh's caliber wouldn't transfer to play immediately for the defending champs.

Instead, IU would be banking on Charlie Becker picking up where he left off and hoping that a young group of wideouts could prevent massive regression after losing Elijah Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr. to the NFL. While that's still critical, that's not the entire reality. IU stands to benefit from that.

Of course, the quarterback position should be discussed with some nuance with defending champs.

History tells us that replacing a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback was mostly an uphill climb in the 21st century. History also matters less at a time when a team like Indiana can get a three-year starter like Josh Hoover to replace Fernando Mendoza.

Hoover is the most experienced quarterback who has replaced a Heisman winner at the position. That will likely boost IU's preseason ranking in ways that previous defending champs with new starting quarterbacks didn't have the luxury of doing.

In that group of six defending champs who started outside the top 4 of the preseason poll the following season, all of them had new starting quarterbacks. With the exception of Tim Tebow replacing 2006 Florida starter Chris Leak, all of them were downgrades, and understandably so.

You're not supposed to get an upgrade when you replace guys like Cam Newton, Deshaun Watson and Joe Burrow. It'd be weird if those teams didn't get a slight knock in the following preseason AP Poll to acknowledge replacing a generational quarterback.

Some will argue that the same logic should be applied to Indiana. After all, Mendoza spent one year in Bloomington and made his case as the best player ever at a place that, prior to Curt Cignetti's arrival, had the most losses of any Division I program in America.

You know. In case you haven't heard.

But IU's preseason ranking, while mostly useless, has another key boost

It's not just Cignetti, who is 27-2 so far as a Power Conference head coach. It's the fact that IU also retained both coordinators, including Broyles Award-winner Bryant Haines.

He became the first Broyles Award-winner to return from a national championship since Brent Venables returned to 2019 Clemson.

Of the six defending champs who started outside the top 4 in the following preseason poll, three of them brought back their head coach, offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator (2007 Florida, 2011 Auburn and 2017 Clemson). Make of that what you will.

Clearly, AP voters looked more at the loss of production and the replacing of a quarterback as bigger factors than returning the three top members of the coaching staff. Expect that sentiment to continue for IU.

Losing eight players to the NFL Draft after the ultimate outlier season should matter, especially at a place that averaged one NFL Draft selection per year in the previous 25 years of the 21st century.

Then again, we're well past the point of pretending that IU's previous history has any bearing on the future under Cignetti.

IU's preseason ranking won't have the final say on where 2026 finishes. Lord knows a program that overcame a preseason No. 20 ranking en route to 16-0 — that was the lowest preseason ranking of a national championship team since 2010 Auburn — has more important things to worry about.

Though if Cignetti wants to, he's one slightly disrespectful preseason ranking away from playing the "nobody believes in you" card in ways that few defending champs ever have.

Something tells me he wouldn't mind getting some extra ammo to shock the world again.

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