Major College Football Program Collapses in 2026 Preseason AP Rankings

Just six times in the history of the preseason college football rankings has a team that didn’t crack the AP top 25 gone on to win the national championship, and now a once-proud program is hoping to make it seven in 2026. Against tremendous odds.

A year ago, Clemson entered the season with the kind of expectations that had become basically routine under Dabo Swinney.

They were No. 4 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, coming off a last-second ACC championship win, and a (brief) College Football Playoff appearance. They looked like a program poised to finally return to the national championship conversation it once dominated.

Twelve months later, they are... not.

A fall from grace in the preseason poll

Major College Football Program Collapses in Preseason AP Rankings — USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Clemson found itself unranked in the 2026 preseason AP poll — the first time they failed to make the inaugural Top 25 of a season since 2011.

In all, they received just 112 votes, making them technically the “No. 26” team in the country, but the symbolism is hard to miss. A program that opened last season in the top five has fallen outside the poll entirely.

The drop isn’t simply about one bad season. It reflects a process how far Clemson’s standing has slipped from the standard it established during the height of the Swinney era.

The 2025 season was a particularly jarring setback. Clemson finished 7-6, winning its fewest games since a 6-7 effort in 2010. After a nerve-racking 1-3 start, they never found any real consistency, and eventually lost to Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl.

That’s what makes the current situation impossible to dismiss as a fluke. Clemson wasn’t “rebuilding” last fall. It entered 2025 with a ton of solid returning production and a roster loaded with future pro prospects. Nine players from that team were taken in the 2026 NFL Draft, yet all that talent produced only seven wins.

Where they go from here

The situation has changed dramatically from year to year. Cade Klubnik is gone, leaving inexperienced replacements at quarterback. The offense brought back coordinator Chad Morris, returning to Clemson in a move that reaches back to the program’s playoff dynasty days.

Swinney has also finally embraced the transfer portal more aggressively than ever, adding 11 players after years of largely resisting it.

That sounds like change. But it also underscores the size of the hill Clemson must climb.

During the 2010s, the Tigers built one of college football’s defining dynasties: a dozen straight double-digit-win seasons, six straight ACC championships, two national titles, and six top-four AP finishes. That history is both Clemson’s greatest asset and its biggest burden. Seven wins might be a respectable season elsewhere, but at Clemson, it’s a warning.

One preseason poll doesn’t say Clemson is finished – if anything, last year’s vote, in which 10 preseason teams finished unranked, showed just how wrong they can be – but pollsters have sent them a definitive message that any benefit of the doubt they were getting has run out.

What history says about unranked preseason teams

It’s no secret that Clemson is starting from a serious disadvantage. Just six teams that were unranked in the preseason poll have won the national title, the most recent being BYU back in 1984, and before that the first team of the Miami dynasty in 1983.

Most notably, Clemson itself pulled off the feat, in 1981, using a huge early upset win over No. 4 Georgia to build what became a perfect 12-0 season, their last natty until 2016.

This season offers the Tigers a similar opportunity, as they visit No. 11 LSU in Lane Kiffin’s first game in charge of that program. A solid effort in that rematch could give Clemson fruitful ground to build a meaningful season and potentially climb into striking distance of a 12-team playoff field.

It will take a lot of work, and allows for few mistakes. For a program accustomed to being part of the national championship discussion in August, that’s a very profound, and unwanted, change.

Clemson doesn’t merely need to win again. It needs to convince everyone that the version of Clemson that once intimidated opponents is still possible. The climb back begins with proving that last year’s collapse was the exception, not the new rule.

Clemson isn’t alone: Another Historic College Football Powerhouse Plummets in Preseason Rankings

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