Oklahoma State Debuts at No. 10 in AP Poll

After coming in at No. 11 in the preseason Coaches Poll, Oklahoma State is No. 10 in the first AP Poll of the 2017 season. These of course mean nothing when it comes to post season play — that is, if you believe all voters for the CFB Playoffs disregard polls and only evaluate what’s happening on the field ? — but they’re still fun to talk about.

This is just OSU’s third time in the Gundy era to start in the top 10 of the AP Poll. In its previous 91 seasons before Gundy, it did it exactly zero times.

Here is the full AP top 25.

Rank	School	First Place Votes	Overall Votes
1	Alabama	52	1,513
2	Ohio State	3	1,414
3	Florida State	4	1,396
4	USC	2	1,325
5	Clemson	–	1,201
6	Penn State	–	1,196
7	Oklahoma	–	1,170
8	Washington	–	1,150
9	Wisconsin	–	926
10	Oklahoma State	–	889
11	Michigan	–	881
12	Auburn	–	880
13	LSU	–	784
14	Stanford	–	695
15	Georgia	–	690
16	Louisville	–	629
17	Florida	–	624
18	Miami	–	492
19	South Florida	–	327
20	Kansas State	–	317
21	Virginia Tech	–	240
22	West Virginia	–	207
23	Texas	–	173
24	Washington State	–	133
25	Tennessee	–	114

Here’s a look at where the Pokes have started each season of the Mike Gundy era. In the previous two seasons in which OSU was ranked inside the top 10 to start the year, they finished unranked (2009) and No. 3 (2011) to end the season.

Year	AP Debut	Ap High	AP Finish
2005	–	–	–
2006	–	–	–
2007	–	–	–
2008	–	7	16
2009	9	5	–
2010	–	10	13
2011	9	2	3
2012	19	18	–
2013	13	6	17
2014	–	15	–
2015	–	4	20
2016	21	10	11
2017	10	?	?

How does head coach Mike Gundy evaluate these rankings?

“I think that preseason polls have a lot to do with returning quarterbacks that have experience, and we’re the same,” said Gundy recently. “When you go into the season and you don’t have a quarterback that has any experience, you don’t have a clue what’s going to happen in most cases.

“So for me, what I said a second ago is exactly what I told the team. We have experience at key positions on both sides of the ball. We have an experienced quarterback, we have skill players that are potentially good enough to someday play in the NFL and we have numbers of depth that have played on both sides. So for that reason, you guys should play well this year. That’s really how I believe it. I always tell (the team) that. I say ‘You guys have a lot of ground to make up here because we don’t have a lot of experience,’ but with these guys, they have to do all of the things that are important to get ready to play.

“But they know that if they prepare and do everything they can and are unselfish and committed, then my expectations of them are to play very well on Saturdays. I don’t see any reasons why they shouldn’t.”