College Football Rankings: AP Top 25 Reveals Preseason Poll for 2026

There’s no exact consensus on who is the No. 1 team in the country as voters release their annual preseason AP top 25 college football rankings.

Although the vast majority of pollsters followed the coaches and predictably named Ohio State the top team heading into the 2026 kickoff, a total of five teams received first-place votes.

Where do things stand in the initial football rankings heading into the 2026 season?

AP Top 25 Preseason College Football Rankings

First-place votes in parentheses

1. Ohio State (40)
2. Oregon (14)
3. Georgia
4. Notre Dame (6)
5. Texas
6. Indiana (8)
7. Miami (1)
8. Texas A&M
9. Ole Miss
10. Oklahoma
11. LSU
12. Texas Tech
13. Alabama
14. BYU
T-14. USC
16. Michigan
17. Washington
18. Penn State
19. SMU
20. Tennessee
21. Utah
22. Iowa
23. Houston
24. Louisville
25. Missouri

How did we do? Our preseason AP Top 25 rankings prediction

Other teams receiving votes

Clemson 112, Florida 51, Boise State 43, Arizona 32, TCU 11, Navy 10, South Carolina 10, Illinois 9, Oklahoma State 8, Vanderbilt 8, Pittsburgh 7, Virginia Tech 6, Minnesota 5, UNLV 4, New Mexico 4, Georgia Tech 4, Louisiana 4, James Madison 3, Auburn 3, Memphis 2, California 2, Liberty 1, Western Michigan 1, Tulane 1, Virginia 1.

Rankings: Coaches Poll | ESPN Top 25

AP preseason poll need to know in 2026

AP Top 25 Preseason College Football Rankings 2026 — USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

So, you’re No. 1. Who cares? Ohio State may be the No. 1 team in the preseason rankings, but top ranked teams this early don’t tend to win the national championship. Just two in this century have. More on that later…

About those top ranked teams. During the College Football Playoff era, only four top ranked AP preseason teams have missed the playoff: Ohio State in 2015, Alabama in 2022, Georgia in 2023, and Texas in 2025.

Back to back? Indiana made a very respectable first showing at No. 6 and earned eight first-place votes, as pollsters are eager to not overlook them again. Can they win a second-straight title? Georgia was the last two-peat, in 2021 and 2022.

S-E-C. S-E-C. While the Big Ten has bragging rights on three straight national titles, the SEC starts this season dominating the poll again, leading college football with nine teams included in the preseason AP vote, a full 36 percent of the rankings, while the B1G placed second with eight teams. One thing to note: no SEC teams received a first-place vote.

Unranked teams’ success. Two teams that didn’t appear in the AP preseason rankings went on to make the College Football Playoff last year: James Madison and Tulane, both Group of Six programs. Four such teams made the playoff two years ago. Navy, Boise State, and UNLV are hopefuls to watch for the G6 spot in the bracket in 2026.

... And ranked teams’ failure. A good half of last preseason’s ranked teams didn’t even finish in the poll: Penn State (2), Clemson (4), LSU (9), Arizona State (11), Illinois (12), South Carolina (13), Florida (15), SMU (16), Kansas State (17), Iowa State (22), Tennessee (24), and Boise State (25). Another good argument for those who don’t really see the point of ranking teams this early.

AP top 25 history. Ohio State remains the most successful college football team in preseason history, ranking No. 1 all time with 73 appearances in the first poll, getting the nod in more than 95 percent of early polls since their debut in 1950. It’s also the most successful team of all time with 1,016 appearances in the regular season polls.

What history says about the No. 1 preseason team

The preseason is a time for expectations, but how important are these rankings?

If you want to win the national championship, being the AP No. 1 team in the preseason poll isn’t the most important thing, or even remotely desirable, going by history.

In this century, just two teams that debuted at No. 1 finished as national champions, when USC did it in 2004 and then Alabama in 2017, the latter of which remains the only team in the College Football Playoff era that went wire to wire.

So where’s a good place to start in the rankings?

For national championship contenders, opening up anywhere in the top five is ideal.

All but just two teams in the College Football Playoff era that went on to win the national title started as the No. 5 team or better in the preseason AP poll.

LSU’s record-breaking 2019 team was the first to break contain, but even then it wasn’t that far off, starting out as the No. 6 team in the initial rankings before going on an undefeated run as the third 15-0 team in college football history.

The second was Indiana, which started as the No. 20 team in the country before laying waste to everything on its schedule to become the first 16-0 team in college football since Yale in 1894 and winning the school’s first national championship.

The best place exactly to start? Among top five spots, that could be No. 2, the preseason ranking that has produced the most national champions in the playoff era (five). Three No. 3 teams went all the way and one No. 5 team did. No fourth-ranked teams have won the title since 2014.

Eventual champions’ preseason AP ranking

In the College Football Playoff era

2014: Ohio State (No. 2)
2015: Alabama (No. 3)
2016: Clemson (No. 2)
2017: Alabama (No. 1)
2018: Clemson (No. 2)
2019: LSU (No. 6)
2020: Alabama (No. 3)
2021: Georgia (No. 5)
2022: Georgia (No. 3)
2023: Michigan (No. 2)
2024: Ohio State (No. 2)
2025: Indiana (No. 20)

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