Huskies Ranked 17th in Preseason AP Top 25 Poll
The Washington Huskies football team, ranked for only one week during the 2025 season, opened at No. 17 in the Associated Press Preseason Top 25 Poll.
The ranking is consistent with where UW has been placed in other polls, and two spots above its No. 19 ranking in the Coaches Poll. Phil Steele lists Washington 15th in his annual College Football Preview. Stewart Mandel of The Athletic placed Washington 15th, while On3’s Brett McMurphy tabbed UW 10th.
After losing to Michigan in the 2023 season’s national championship game, Washington went unranked for all of head coach Jedd Fisch’s first UW season in 2024. The Huskies landed at No. 24 after beating then-No. 23 Illinois on Oct. 25, 2025, but immediately fell out a week later after a 13-10 loss at Wisconsin.
Though the preseason polls technically mean nothing in terms of the College Football Playoff chances, the CFP rankings have historically resembled the weekly AP and Coaches polls. The starting point in preseason polls can factor into midseason rankings for some teams as programs that continue to win are rarely passed by teams ranked below them.
The first CFP rankings are slated to come out on Tuesday, Nov. 3, a few days after the Huskies return from a trip to Nebraska. Washington, which opens with home games against unranked Washington State, Utah State, Eastern Washington and Minnesota, will face its first of five preseason ranked teams on Oct. 3 at current No. 14 USC. No. 22 Iowa visits Husky Stadium on Oct. 9, and eighteenth-ranked Penn State plays at UW on Nov. 7.
The Huskies will close the regular season at home against No. 6 Indiana and on the road at No. 2 Oregon.
While the polls can be important for early-season positioning, national attention and recruiting, they become meaningless when teams lose. Twelve of 25 teams ranked in the 2025 preseason AP Poll finished the year unranked: Penn State (No. 2), Clemson (4), LSU (9), Arizona State (11), Illinois (12), South Carolina (13), Florida (15), SMU (16), Kansas State (17), Iowa State (22), Tennessee (24) and Boise State (25).
Here is the full poll. Point values in parentheses indicate the number of first-place votes.
1. Ohio State 1,672 (40)
2. Oregon 1,597 (14)
3. Georgia 1,513
4. Notre Dame 1,510 (6)
5. Texas 1,483
6. Indiana 1,440 (8)
7. Miami (FL) 1,379 (1)
8. Texas A&M 1,131
9. Ole Miss 1,102
10. Oklahoma 1,047
11. LSU 988
12. Texas Tech 983
13. Alabama 904
14. BYU 839
14. USC 839
16. Michigan 718
17. Washington 501
18. Penn State 482
19. SMU 434
20. Tennessee 394
21. Utah 304
22. Iowa 260
23. Houston 252
24. Louisville 194
25. Missouri 117
Others receiving votes: Clemson 112, Florida 51, Boise State 43, Arizona 32, TCU 11, Navy 10, South Carolina 10, Illinois 9, Oklahoma State 8, Vanderbilt 8, Pittsburgh 7, Virginia Tech 6, Minnesota 5, UNLV 4, New Mexico 4, Georgia Tech 4, Louisiana 4, James Madison 3, Auburn 3, Memphis 2, California 2, Liberty 1, Western Michigan 1, Tulane 1, Virginia 1
