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Preseason College Football Rankings: Kansas State At No. 18, Behind TCU And Oklahoma

The return of Collin Klein has many bullish on the Wildcats, who have a chance to make a push in a wide-open Big 12 race.

By Jonathan Tjarks
Getty Images

Now that the LSU-Alabama game is over a week old, it's time to start thinking about the 2012 college football season, even if it's still nine months away.

The SBNation BlogPoll, which combines the opinions of a wide spectrum of team-specific bloggers, has an early pre-season top 25 out.

Kansas State, after a surprising 10-3 season that ended with a Cotton Bowl appearance and a No. 15 rating in the final AP poll, checks in at No. 18, behind only two other Big 12 teams: Oklahoma at No. 5 and TCU at No. 13.

The Big 12 is tied with the SEC with five teams in the top 25, but the conference still has a ways to go to catch up in terms of national perception and prevent situations like 2011 where the Wildcats, the conference's second-place team, were hurdled by Michigan and Virginia Tech for BCS at large berths.

The SEC has five teams in the top 10, although they all trail USC, rated No. 1 after Matt Barkley decided to return to Southern California for his senior season.

Anticipating a tougher season now that they are in the SEC, Missouri finished in the "others receiving category", while Kansas, despite the optimism surrounding the arrivals of Charlie Weis and Dayne Crist, did not even get that far after last season's 2-10 debacle.