AP Poll 2026: College Football Preseason Rankings, Explained

Ohio State opens the 2026 season as the AP’s No. 1 team, with 40 of 69 first-place votes — its first preseason top ranking since 2015.

The more interesting number is further down the ballot. Five teams received first-place votes, and two of the sides ranked above them got none.

The full AP preseason Top 25

Released 17 August 2026. First-place votes in brackets.

BYU and USC are tied on 839 points, which is why there is no 15th place.

Who actually got first-place votes?

Only five teams, and the list does not follow the rankings.

Georgia and Texas received none. They sit third and fifth on total points — plenty of voters have them high — but not one of the 69 put either at the top of a ballot.

Indiana is the outlier. Eight voters think they are the best team in the country. Enough of the others rank them well below that to leave them sixth. A team can only end up in that position if opinion on it is genuinely split, which is more information than its ranking alone conveys.

Note that the votes sum to 69, which is the number of voters. That is the check that says nobody has been left out of the list.

AP vs the Coaches Poll

The two polls disagree about exactly one team.

Clemson is the top team in AP’s others-receiving-votes list with 112 points, so this is a narrow disagreement rather than a wild one — but it is the only roster difference in 25 places.

Of the 24 teams both polls rank, 12 sit at identical positions and 12 differ, none by more than two places:

The coaches also spread their first-place votes across six teams rather than five, and they spread them differently: Indiana took 14 of theirs, more than any team except Ohio State, while sitting sixth there as well. Georgia and Texas, shut out on the AP ballot, got seven and two from the coaches.

Those totals come to 72, which implies a 72-strong coaching panel — though neither source we used publishes that figure, so treat it as arithmetic rather than a stated number.

Which conferences are represented?

Two leagues hold 17 of the 25 places.

The SEC’s nine is the largest bloc, but the Big Ten has the top two — Ohio State and Oregon — and six of its eight sit in the top 18.

Others 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, James Madison 3, Auburn 3, Memphis 2, California 2, Liberty 1, Western Michigan 1, Tulane 1, Virginia 1.

That is twenty-four teams, read from AP’s own page. An earlier version of this list also carried Louisiana on four points, which two secondary write-ups report and AP’s page does not.

Clemson’s 112 points would not have been far off 25th place, where Missouri sits on 117.

What has a preseason No. 1 been worth historically?

Not much of a guarantee, on the record so far.

Since AP began publishing preseason polls in 1950, 11 teams have started and finished a season at No. 1. The most recent was Alabama in 2017, which is also the only team to have gone wire to wire in the College Football Playoff era. Across this century, only two teams that opened at No. 1 finished as champions: USC in 2004 and Alabama in 2017.

That is a record of what has happened, not a claim about what will. The 2026 season has not been played.

When does the season start, and when does this poll change?

The games begin on Saturday 29 August, but this poll stands well past that. Week 0 is a short opening slate; Week 1 runs from Thursday 3 to Monday 7 September. AP’s own poll page schedules the next AP Top 25 for Tuesday 8 September at 2 p.m. ET — the day after Week 1 closes on Labor Day — so the preseason ballot above is the current one through Week 0 and Week 1 alike.

Ohio State opens at home against Ball State on Saturday 5 September, in Week 1.

One scheduling note worth knowing if you are following the rankings rather than a single team: Missouri, ranked 25th, is the only team that will play five of the preseason top 10. Whatever the poll looks like by November, that schedule will have had more to do with it than the August ballot did.

What to watch

• Watch the first-place votes, not just the rank. Georgia at third with zero of them and Indiana at sixth with eight are different kinds of ranking, and the number of the ballot does not say so.
• Indiana is the poll’s genuine disagreement. Both panels are split on them, in the same direction, at the same rank.
• Clemson and Louisville are the swing entry. One poll has each; a single September result will likely settle it.
• The polls are 13 days apart. Some of the gap between them is opinion and some is just calendar.
• Ignore anything that prices this. The poll and its vote counts are published and checkable. Anything quoting you a number about how the season ends is somebody’s guess with a decimal point on it.

Sources

Checked 26 August 2026. The rankings were last re-read in full on AP’s own page on 19 August; the 26 August check confirmed that page still offers only the preseason poll and schedules the next Top 25 for 8 September. No affiliate links, and no payment was received for any link on this page.