Inside The Huskies

Huskies Show Up on Every Way-Too-Early Football Poll

It's become ritual to post a Top 25 almost immediately following the national championship game.
Dan Raley|
The 2025 Husky offensive linemen gathered for a photo one last time after the LA Bowl.
The 2025 Husky offensive linemen gathered for a photo one last time after the LA Bowl. | Dave Sizer photo

Once the winner is determined -- in this case, the Indiana Hoosiers -- a college football ritual is to distribute a Way-Too-Early Top 25 ranking within hours, if not minutes, of the championship game coming to a close.

Everyone does this.

ESPN. FOX. CBS. And more.

It might be comforting to the local football fan to know that the University of Washington football team turns up on every last one of them.

Of the most name recognizable forecasters, ESPN has the Huskies 19th, FOX has them 18th and CBS likewise pegs them 19th.

Of course, these polls and their immediacy sometimes fall victim to unforeseen circumstances, such as what happened two years ago when ESPN took a crystal-ball look at the college football landscape and selected a Jedd Fisch-coached Arizona team ninth and a Kalen DeBoer-led UW entry 11th.

Within 48 hours, DeBoer was gone to Alabama and Fisch turned up at Washington. Many, many players got up and left, too.

The Wildcats and the Huskies, with unimaginable turnover at the time, finished 4-8 and 6-7 in 2024, respectively.

Now comes a Husky team that will return seven starters on offense, including quarterback Demond Williams Jr. -- after much offseason persuasion to remain in Montlake -- and seven starters on defense from a 9-4 team that drubbed Boise State 38-10 in the LA Bowl, a game that no longer exists.

So this time the UW has built-in high regard as it pushes forward, something it was greatly lacking this past fall when it was ranked for just one week in the Associated Press poll -- 24th after winning six of its first eight games while coming off a bye week.

In the final AP poll released on Tuesday, the Huskies still found themselves two spots outside of the Top 25.

Of course, if Williams plays as well as Fisch says he will, the Huskies are better suited to be a Top 10 team.

After reportedly trying to poach the signed Husky quarterback, LSU, for that matter, turns up ranked 13th, 15th and 14th in the Way-Too Early guesswork after settling on Sam Leavitt, formerly of Arizona State, as its next starting quarterback.

The Huskies, it appears, need to settle on a starting defensive tackle, an offensive tackle, a running back and a wide receiver or two before they really make a big jump up the national rankings.

Of course, it's way too early to determine who those guys might be.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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