The pads haven't popped yet. The August sun hasn't finished baking the practice fields off Cullen Boulevard. But by the time Willie Fritz blows his first whistle of fall camp Wednesday morning, his team will already have banked a win for the 2026 season, a number next to its name.

Tuesday, USA Today unveiled its preseason Coaches Poll, the first official temperature check of the year, and there, tucked in at No. 24, sat the University of Houston. Blink and you might have missed it. But locally, it landed like a cannon shot. This is Houston's first preseason ranking since 2022, when Dana Holgorsen's Cougars opened at No. 25 on the strength of a 12-win season. Before that, you have to go back to 2016. In other words, this doesn't happen here very often. And now it has, right as the buzz around Year Three of the Fritz era reach a full boil.

To understand why a No. 24 ranking feels like a landmark and not a footnote, you have to remember where this program was sitting two Augusts ago. Fritz inherited a rebuild in December 2023 and got exactly what rebuilds usually get in year one: a 4-8 record and a lot of patience required. Then came 2025. Houston ripped off a six-win improvement tied for the largest single-season turnaround among Power Four teams in the country, capped by a 10-3 finish, a fourth-place showing in the Big 12, and a 38-35 shootout win over LSU in the Texas Bowl on their home turf at NRG Stadium. The Cougars closed the year ranked No. 19 in the Coaches Poll and No. 22 in the AP Poll, their first appearance in either final poll since 2021.

That's the résumé that got Houston into this conversation before a single snap of 2026. It's also the résumé of a coach who, at 66 years old and in his 34th season overall, ranks second nationally among active FBS head coaches in career victories. Fritz didn't stumble into this. He's been doing it for three decades, and Houston is simply the latest program to feel the hand.

The engine behind the leap forward returns largely intact. Quarterback Conner Weigman, the former Texas A&M transfer, threw for 2,705 yards and 25 touchdowns last fall while adding 700 yards and 11 scores on the ground, and he authored five game-winning drives along the way. His top target, wideout Amare Thomas, is back after an All-America season, joined now by Oregon State transfer Trent Walker. Tight end Tanner Koziol, who led all of FBS at his position in receptions, returns to torment linebackers over the middle.

Up front, the Cougars added Tulane transfer guard Shadre Hurst, regarded as one of the best portal pickups in the entire Big 12, and running back Makhi Hughes arrives from Oregon to deepen a backfield that already has coordinators around the league nervous. Twelve returning starters in total, and a roster with the kind of continuity most Big 12 programs would kill for entering a make-or-break season.

The Big 12 itself had a real, if modest, footprint in the poll. Texas Tech checked in as the conference's highest-ranked team at No. 12, still absorbing the shakeup of quarterback Brendan Sorsby's departure from college football. BYU followed at No. 15, Utah landed at No. 21, and then Houston rounded it out at No. 24—four teams total, a group that will spend the fall trying to prove the conference deserves more respect than a single top-12 entry suggests. For Houston, the path to backing up the ranking runs straight through two of those names: a trip to Lubbock on Sept. 19 to face Texas Tech and a visit to Salt Lake City on Oct. 24 to face Utah, Houston's first trip there since 1977.

Sandwiched around a road-heavy stretch through Kansas, State, Colorado, and West Virginia, the season closes at home against Baylor on Nov. 28 before the Big 12 Championship the following week—assuming the Cougars are still playing meaningful December football, which is exactly the expectation Fritz has set for a fan base no longer content with moral victories.

Towering over all of it, at No. 1 overall, is Ohio State. The Buckeyes are back in the national championship conversation behind quarterback Julian Sayin, superstar receiver Jeremiah Smith, and running back Bo Jackson, an offense that may be the best in the country returning largely as-is. Ryan Day's group will lean on Alabama transfer linebacker Qua Russaw and a retooled defense to replace the NFL talent it lost, but make no mistake — the Buckeyes enter fall camp as the team everyone else is chasing.

For Houston, none of that changes what starts Wednesday morning. A preseason ranking is a compliment, not a credential. It buys attention, not wins. Fritz has built his entire career on outworking the number next to his team's name, and Year Three will be judged in November, not August. But for a program that spent most of the last decade searching for relevance in a league that didn't always know its name, waking up ranked on the first morning of camp is exactly the kind of pressure Houston has been chasing. Fall camp opens. The countdown to kickoff — Sept. 5 against Oregon State at TDECU Stadium — officially begins.

USA Today Preseason Coaches Poll — Top 25 (2026 Season)

Others receiving votes: Louisville, Florida, TCU, Illinois, South Carolina, Arizona, Virginia, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Boise State, Oklahoma State, UNLV, NC State, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Nebraska, Memphis, Arizona State, James Madison, Duke, Pittsburgh, New Mexico, Western Michigan, Navy, San Diego State, Kansas State, Jacksonville State, Hawaii, California.