The Weight of Being First Before a Single Play
Ohio State sits atop the Verdict preseason board at No. 1, and what that means is more complicated than the number suggests.
There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a program in the days before a season opens. The rankings are posted. The projections are printed. Everyone has something to say about what is coming, and none of it has been tested yet.
Ohio State is No. 1 on the Verdict preseason board this morning. Team Strength rating of 94.5. Projected to run the table. The highest-ranked traditional power on the board, and by the evidence, not by sentiment.
I want to sit with that for a moment, because I think most coverage of the top spot treats it as a destination. A reward. Something to announce and move on from. I don't think that's quite right.
Being first before a single snap isn't a crown. It's a target, and it is also a kind of obligation — to the standard the number implies, to every program further down the board that spent its offseason pointing at Columbus and circling a date.
Somewhere this morning, in a football facility that isn't in Ohio, a position coach is pulling up the Buckeyes' film. A coordinator is building a specific game plan around a specific weakness they believe exists, whether or not anyone on the outside can see it yet. Somewhere a head coach is telling a room full of players that the preseason board means exactly nothing, while also knowing — privately, honestly — that it means something to his recruiting class, his administration, and every fan who follows his program.
That is the gravity of No. 1. It doesn't belong only to the team that holds it.
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I wrote in this space at the start of the summer about the arrival of a season — how the preseason is the one moment when every program, no matter its history or its resources, shares the same record. I want to return to that thought from a different angle now.
When an analytics system awards a score of 94.5, it is making a claim. Not a promise, not a prophecy — a claim, built from evidence. Verdict is not in the business of nostalgia. Ohio State doesn't earn a 94.5 because of who it used to be. It earns it because of what the evidence says it is right now.
That distinction is worth something. There are programs in this country that have coasted on reputation for years — that show up on preseason lists because pollsters remember their last championship banner rather than their last two recruiting classes. That is not what the Verdict board is doing. The 94.5 is an argument, and like any good argument, it invites a response.
The response comes on Saturdays.
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I have been thinking about what blue blood actually means. The phrase gets used casually, usually to separate a small group of programs from the rest of the sport, as though history has already decided who belongs at the top. I understand the shorthand. I also think it sometimes does a disservice to the teams that earn their way into those conversations without the weight of a century of tradition behind them.
Ohio State has the tradition. The stadium that still sells out before a ticket is listed. The band that has been doing the same script at halftime for as long as anyone in the state of Ohio can remember. The high school coach in a small town who grew up watching the Horseshoe and tells his players about it every summer. That is real. It is a competitive advantage in recruiting, in fan support, in the kind of program culture that carries a team through a difficult October.
But tradition does not play on Saturdays. Character does. Preparation does. The ability to handle expectation — especially the expectation that comes from being the team everyone else is measuring themselves against.
That is what No. 1 asks of Ohio State before a single snap has been taken.
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The preseason board will change. It always does. Some team outside the top five will win a game it had no business winning, and we will remember why we love this sport. Some team near the top will lose a player to injury and quietly recalibrate everything. A staff will make an adjustment nobody saw coming, and a fanbase will go from worried to electric in the span of one afternoon.
None of that has happened yet. Right now, the board says 94.5. Right now, it says No. 1.
What it says after a few Saturdays — that's the only number that will matter.
See you next Saturday.
Why Bruns wrote this
Ohio State at No. 1 is the most visible fact on the preseason board, and I didn't want to simply repeat it — I wanted to examine what the top spot actually costs a program before it plays a game. The tension between earned evidence and inherited expectation is a story about the whole sport, not just one team. I featured Ohio State once before at the season's opening, but that column was about the arrival of a new season for everyone; this one is specifically about the particular gravity of being first, which is a genuinely different idea worth exploring on its own terms.
This column was inspired by real events and data from Verdict — context, not justification. The evidence is impartial; the perspective is Bruns Cole's.
Earlier columns about the same team and rivalry.
What 3.8 Points Actually Buys You Before Kickoff
Ohio State's cushion atop the Verdict board is the largest in the preseason — and understanding what that gap means analytically tells you more than the ranking itself does.
What the Empty Columns on the Preseason Board Are Actually Saying
A score without completed games isn't an incomplete thought — it's the most precise statement analytics can make in August.
What 94.5 Knows and What It Doesn't
Ohio State opens the board at No. 1 with a Team Strength score the evidence supports — and that score is also the clearest possible statement of what preseason evaluation cannot do.
The Whole Country Holds Still for a Moment
Before the first snap of 2026, college football belongs equally to everyone — and that is the only time all season that will be true.