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No one believes in us.

Most of the time, it’s simply not true. It’s a straw man that athletes (and even coaches) create to give themselves that little extra bit of inspiration. It’s easier to find that edge when the haters are putting you down — even if their disrespect is mostly fabricated, a figment of players’ imaginations born from some random, anonymous social-media post or something someone told them that’s entirely lacking in context.

Anyway, in the case of the 2025 Arizona football team, it’s not made up. It’s completely, unequivocally true.

No one believes in the Wildcats.

Despite the Big 12 Conference’s attempt to — more on this in a bit — the narrative has been established as training camp approaches: The college football punditry thinks Arizona will stink.

247Sports’ preseason poll has the Wildcats finishing dead last in the 16-team Big 12. Athlon Sports, Lindy’s and Phil Steele place them 15th. Colleague Jon Wilner has them 11th — a generous assessment considering the perception among many UA fans that Wilner’s cooler is filled with Wildcat Haterade.

The widespread disregard for the ‘25 Cats isn’t unwarranted. Nor is it necessarily a negative development.

The ‘24 Cats buckled under the weight of heightened expectations. It wasn’t their only issue. But it was definitely one of them.

Those expectations were set the previous winter, when Arizona capped a 10-3 season with a thrilling Alamo Bowl victory and retained most of its top-end talent amid the transition from Jedd Fisch to Brent Brennan.

The official had the Wildcats finishing fifth. They were considered to be among a handful of contenders to win the league and participate in the expanded College Football Playoff.

We were all guilty of overrating the ‘24 squad — underestimating the impact of the players Arizona lost and underplaying the importance of having the right coordinators. Add injuries to the mix — a predictable outcome, in hindsight, after the Wildcats enjoyed positive injury luck in ‘23 — and the season turned into a 4-8 flop.

Although plenty of pressure remains on Brennan’s shoulders — he might need to make a bowl game to keep his job — the players enter the ‘25 season unburdened by expectations. There are none.

If Arizona can go 6-6 — my prediction since spring — it’ll be considered a major step in the right direction. If the Wildcats can pull off an upset or two along the way, they’ll be completely justified in saying that no one believed in them. Because, as of today, no one outside their building does.

It’s in the game, wrongly

Want further proof of how little is thought of the ‘25 Cats? The Big 12 put out a , consisting of 29 players. It did not feature a single Arizona Wildcat.

The Athletic ranked the heading into the 2025 season. No UA players made the list.

If anyone seemed like a candidate to appear on either of those, it was junior safety Genesis Smith.

Not only did Smith get shut out, he received a laughably low in the initial release of the EA Sports College Football 26 video game.

Colleague Justin Spears addressed this topic with Smith at Big 12 Media Days, but I’d like to explore it a little further if you’ll indulge me.

It is unquestionably difficult to accurately grade approximately 11,000 players — especially with an abundance of transfers from lower levels and incoming freshmen who’ve never played a snap of college football — so we’ll give EA a bit of grace. But Smith should’ve been an easy one.

Let’s start with the most basic way to measure a player’s effectiveness — his stats. Smith ranked third on last year’s team in tackles, tied for second in forced fumbles, tied for first in pass breakups and first in interceptions.

Need more? Well, our friends over at grade players for a living. They had Smith as Arizona’s second-highest-graded defensive player — first among those who played significant roles.

Smith’s PFF grade of 72.1 would’ve been higher if not for a poor 43.8 tackling grade. PFF charged Smith with a team-high-tying 15 missed tackles.

Wanna give Smith a subpar tackling grade, EA? Fine. But he more than makes up for it with range, instincts and ball skills — especially if he’s locked into his best position, free safety, which wasn’t always the case last year.

Finally, if the rank-and-file rankers were paying any attention whatsoever in spring, they’d know that Smith was the best player on the field most days. To place him outside the top 10 on Arizona’s roster is absurd.

Hopefully, Smith will get the respect he deserves in the next update. In the meantime, it’s more motivational material for one of the leaders of the disrespected desert dwellers.

Poll stance

The video game provides an official record of sorts, even if some of the assessments are inaccurate. The Big 12 oddly ended that practice, making the preseason poll disappear. Who does Brett Yormark think he is, Pam Bondi?

Anyway, I don’t buy the argument that those polls create unalterable perceptions about teams within the CFP selection committee. I’ve never been privy to those meetings. But I have voted in the AP poll for almost a decade. I’ve looked at any number of metrics to figure out my Top 25. I’ve never even considered looking at a preseason conference poll.

Did last year’s poll hurt the likes of ASU and BYU? Perhaps. More likely, they fell victim to simple geographical bias.

Aside from the biggest brands, teams west of Texas don’t get the same respect as SEC, Big Ten and even ACC programs. This has been plaguing college football forever.

Many of my fellow AP voters don’t pay as much attention to West Coast teams, especially when their games kick off at 10 or even 11 p.m. Eastern Time. That wasn’t the case when BYU beat SMU in Dallas last September — a win that should’ve given the Cougars cachet with the committee and rendered the Big 12 preseason poll moot, if anyone was factoring it into the equation (which, again, I don’t think was happening).

If you’re looking for a legitimate reason to eliminate preseason polls, the current state of the sport would qualify. With so much player movement and roster turnover, it’s harder than ever to predict what’s going to happen.

Rich Rodriguez’s West Virginia Mountaineers, for example, have a portal class of 52 transfers, behind Purdue’s 54. I doubt even RichRod knows whether his team will be any good.

WVU’s projected starting defense, per Lindy’s preview magazine, features zero returning starters. Oklahoma State has only one on each side of the ball.

The Mountaineers, Cowboys and UCF Knights — who have a new coach, Scott Frost, and one returning starter on offense — are down there with the Wildcats at the bottom of the conference in most preseason projections. No one believes in any of them.

With college football having turned into , it’s understandable.

That doesn’t mean the Big 12 preseason poll should be eradicated. It’s harmless, fun and something to talk about before the real stuff begins and expectations are — or at least should be — recalibrated.