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COLUMBIA, Mo. — Doubt? Disrespect?

Whatever it is — and whether or not it’s fair — The Associated Press preseason poll handed Missouri a sobering dose.

The Tigers received a handful of votes but nowhere near enough to crack the top 25, leaving them as the seventh team out of the poll despite having posted double-digit wins in both 2024 and 2025.

Omitting Mizzou is not necessarily surprising, given the general negative perception of the program as it replaces key losses at quarterback, running back, wide receiver and along the offensive line.

Yet it’s still striking because AP voters very rarely leave teams coming off back-to-back double-digit win seasons off their ballots.

Power conference teams with 10 wins in each of the two prior seasons have been left out of the top 25 just 5.4% of the time over the last decade, according to AP Poll records compiled by the Post-Dispatch. That has happened in only four of 74 instances.

Missouri in 2025, Washington in 2024, Oklahoma State in 2018 and Wisconsin in 2016 were left out of the preseason Top 25 despite consecutive double-digit win totals. The other 70 times, programs received the benefit of the doubt and made the list.

Of course, MU coach Eli Drinkwitz and his “something to prove� motto are happy to turn doubt into a benefit. Still, anyone peeved at the Tigers’ absence from preseason top 25 lists can at least argue that the program has been rather uniquely discounted.

Only once before has a Southeastern Conference team been left out of the preseason top 25 after consecutive 10-win seasons: Georgia, in 1984, after finishing ranked No. 4 in both ’82 and ’83.

This has happened to Missouri in the past, in 2009, after Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin departed the program.

The knock against Mizzou this time around seems to largely stem from something similar: the amount of talent it’ll need to replace in 2025 — starpower like quarterback Brady Cook, wideout Luther Burden III and first-round draft pick Armand Membou, to name a few.

A quarterback competition between Beau Pribula and Sam Horn doesn’t seem to project much confidence to the nation at large, or at least not enough to make key portal acquisitions like running back Ahmad Hardy, receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. and edge rusher Damon Wilson II matter much.

And Missouri, harsh as this may sound, is not a blue-blood program. The Tigers have put together two 10-win seasons in a row three times in program history, but never extended one of those streaks to three in a row.

Was that on the minds of voters during this preseason? It’s probably too niche of a stat, but maybe Mizzou comes across as a program more prone to a flashy stretch here and there without sustained success.

As far as the other three back-to-back 10-win teams to have been left out of the poll, they have some similarities with the current state of MU but diverged on very different in-season trajectories.

Washington, left out in 2024 despite having finished second in the country in 2023 and closing the 2022 season ranked No. 8, was left out because of coach Kalen DeBoer’s departure for Alabama.

New coach Jedd Fisch, plus the huge wave of transfers that accompanies modern coaching changes, did not inspire the same confidence. Losing star quarterback Michael Penix Jr. and trading in a Pac-12 schedule for the school’s first year in the Big Ten didn’t help matters either.

The Huskies received some votes in the preseason but wound up finishing 6-7 overall and 4-5 against Big Ten foes — and never cracking the top 25. Oklahoma State missed out on a ranking heading into 2018, which was its 14th year under coach Mike Gundy. The key knock against the Cowboys seemed to be a quarterback change: Mason Rudolph, who led the country with 4,904 passing yards in 2017, was off to the NFL, and replacing him looked like a tall task.

A few weeks into the 2018 season, Oklahoma State climbed into the poll and reached No. 15, but that was the peak. The Cowboys wound up unranked, 7-6 overall and 3-6 in Big 12 play and beat a ranked Mizzou team in the Liberty Bowl.

Wisconsin’s 2016 omission was especially drastic, given that the Badgers had been ranked in preseason polls for each of the 15 years prior. Whether it was fuel for their fire or just bad intel, leaving them off the top 25 quickly looked foolish that year: Wisconsin beat No. 5 Louisiana State in Week 1 and entered the poll at 10th in the nation, finishing the year No. 9.

Mizzou, of course, will have a chance to prove the voters wrong in quite a simple way: winning enough games to climb up the poll.

There won’t be an immediate opportunity to do so, though, and very few chances for the Tigers to make any drastic leaps in national perception. No. 8 Alabama, No. 13 South Carolina, No. 18 Oklahoma and No. 19 Texas A&M are the only preseason ranked teams on the docket for MU’s 2025 slate.

As such, the message sent by the AP Poll is clear: Winning 10 games again might be an uphill battle, but it’s the best way for Missouri to earn the respect it craves.