Where Texas Longhorns Land in Early Top 25 Rankings

With all the buzz in the world around them, Arch Manning and the Texas Longhorns opened the 2025 college football season as the No. 1 team in the country.

Despite the program's illustrious history, it was the first time in school history that it opened the college football season as the top team. To add to the buzz, the nephew of Super Bowl champions Eli and Peyton Manning was finally starting after serving as a backup to Quinn Ewers for the previous two years.

Texas' time at the top didn't last long, as they lost their Week 1 opener against the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes. Manning had a relatively slow start when you consider he was being compared to legends like Tim Tebow, but he turned things around down the stretch.

Texas Longhorns No. 1 in ESPN Analyst's Early Top 25 Rankings

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian talks with quarterback Arch Manning (16) during a timeout in the second half against the Vanderbilt Commodores at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. | Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

With that being said, Texas finished the year with a 10-3 record after beating Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. With the Longhorns returning a much more veteran roster in 2026, the buzz for them to be among the top teams is already circulating.

ESPN's Heather Dinich took to Instagram recently to release what she called a way-too-early top 25 rankings, and sitting atop the rankings were the Longhorns.

Dinich's top five consisted of Texas, Notre Dame, Indiana, Ohio State and Georgia.

Assuming her rankings are somewhat representative of how the AP voters will think, the Longhorns will have another top-five matchup with Ohio State. However, the biggest difference between next year's matchup and this past season's is the fact that it takes place in Week 2 as opposed to Week 1.

While Manning and the offense took the first month to heat up, it certainly was a big ask to open with a team as talented as Ohio State right out of the gate.

Something that Sarkisian alluded to following the team's Citrus Bowl win, as he credited his club for being able to overcome various obstacles throughout the year.

"I am really proud of our football team," Sarkisian said. "We were just talking in the locker room about the life of a competitor, and the life of a competitor isn't easy, and there is ups and downs. There is adversity. There is personal adversity. There is team adversity. There is plenty of guys in that locker room that had personal adversity this year, throughout their career. This team had its own adversity this season."

Texas opens next season against Texas State.