KU Football: Last place ranking in preseason Big 12 poll not shocking

For fans of KU Football, seeing their team listed at the bottom of a preseason Big 12 poll really isn’t much of a heartbreaker. The Jayhawks have struggled to stay relevant in football over the past few years.

The preseason Big 12 polls are out and KU football is ranked dead last heading into the 2017 college football season. Oklahoma was ranked first with their rival Oklahoma State in second and unsurprisingly, Kansas State took the third spot.

While there is certainly optimism surrounding Kansas’ football program, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. KU football isn’t going to play any meaningful games past December this year. There won’t be a big bowl game to partake in and likely not even a winning record on the horizon.

On the flip side of that, however, the Jayhawks will have an improved season from what fans are used to. That doesn’t mean they’re going to become perennial winners overnight, but they will win more than two games in 2017.

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A lot of KU fans are still riding high after defeating the Texas Longhorns in overtime a season ago and they have every right to enjoy that moment. They could potentially beat Texas again in 2017, even though the Longhorns were ranked fourth in this poll, which is total crap.

KU should be able to take down teams like Iowa State and even Texas Tech as well (now that their star quarterback has gone off to the NFL). There’s also the non-conference schedule, which features schools like SEMO, Central Michigan, and Ohio, all of whom should be beatable schools for KU football.

With this bottom ranking in the preseason polls once again, the Jayhawks have been put in the dead last spot every year for the last seven years. It hasn’t been quite a decade since the Kansas Jayhawks were relevant in football, but fans are still waiting for the tides to turn and for the crimson and blue to become a powerhouse in the sport.

The 2017 season could still be a rough one for Kansas, but they’re not far off from slowly climbing their way up the ladder. It won’t come this year and probably not next either, but the Jayhawks won’t be in the Big 12 football cellar forever. Eventually they’ll become a team to be reckoned with and will not see their names at the bottom of the preseason rankings.

Until then, however, let’s just enjoy the improvement that happens for the Kansas football team.