Every year the majority of teams ranked in the pre-season Top 25 are there because of brand name and reputation alone. Most egregious this year was Florida State (No. 10), but also Utah (No. 12), Oklahoma (No. 16), Oklahoma St (No. 17), Arizona (No. 20), Kansas (No. 22), USC (No. 23), and North Carolina State (No. 24) opened the season ranked even though they now sit with .500 or worse records.
Of course those teams shouldn’t be ranked - and they aren’t - but the damage is done because the bias of those teams’ rankings get undeservedly baked into other team’s rankings.