Chris Vannini’s FBS Forecast Puts Memphis at No. 62, Sees Tigers Fifth in the American

What happened this week in college football is simple: The Athletic’s Chris Vannini released a full 138-team preseason ranking, placing the Memphis Tigers at No. 62 in the country as the sport heads toward the start of the 2026 season. The position matters mostly as a marker of national expectations, since Memphis is coming off a stretch where Group of Five teams typically have to prove their case early to climb the national conversation.

Vannini’s ranking is not just a single-team exercise. According to the published report, he built the full list using the same approach he used in a prior installment that covered every Group of Six conference. In that earlier work, he predicted Memphis would finish fifth in the American Athletic Conference. That projection provides the backdrop for the Tigers’ No. 62 placement, essentially treating Memphis as a middle-of-the-pack contender within a conference where the standings can tighten quickly.

In practice, a No. 62 ranking puts Memphis around the general band of teams that are neither expected to contend for an automatic path to the most visible bowls nor completely out of the mix. It also suggests that Vannini views Memphis as more of a “win your winnable games and keep stacking results” type of program than a team built for a guaranteed jump up the conference standings without resistance.

For Memphis and other American Athletic Conference schools, the larger theme is how the evaluation process tends to treat conference strength and depth. The American has often had multiple teams in the national discussion in recent seasons, and Vannini’s fifth-place conference projection implies the Tigers are behind the top cluster he sees forming inside the league. That does not rule out a season defined by improved play, but it does frame how the Tigers might be judged if they start slowly, or if close games tilt against them.

The Athletic ranking and its companion conference forecast arrive ahead of an upcoming season, but they are not official standings, preseason polls in the NCAA sense, or predictions backed by game-by-game results. They are best understood as a forecast from one analyst using a standardized ranking exercise, which means fans and observers should treat the number as directional rather than definitive.

What to watch next is whether Memphis can turn that middle-tier national placement into measurable momentum. If the Tigers climb in performance, they can force a reevaluation because preseason rankings tend to become less predictive once teams establish themselves on the field. Conversely, if Memphis finishes behind that fifth-place projection, it would reinforce Vannini’s view of where the program sits in the current American pecking order.

For now, Memphis is being slotted at No. 62 nationally and fifth in the American by Vannini’s preseason work. The Tigers’ job, as always, is to make those expectations either feel conservative or prove the logic right as the season unfolds. The rankings may not change until after games begin, but the criteria behind them will quickly become visible once the Tigers start testing the teams around them in the conference.