AP Poll 2026: College Football Preseason Rankings, Explained
- Ohio State is the AP preseason No. 1 with 40 of 69 first-place votes — its first preseason top ranking since 2015.
- Five teams received first-place votes, and the order is not what the rankings suggest. Indiana sits sixth with eight of them, while third-placed Georgia and fifth-placed Texas received none.
- The AP and the coaches disagree on exactly one team out of 25. AP has Louisville at 24; the coaches have Clemson at 23 and leave Louisville out entirely.
- The SEC has nine ranked teams and the Big Ten eight, which together account for 17 of the 25 places.
- Since preseason polls began in 1950, 11 teams have started and finished No. 1 in the same season. Only two have managed it this century.
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.
| # | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ohio State (40) | 1,672 |
| 2 | Oregon (14) | 1,597 |
| 3 | Georgia | 1,513 |
| 4 | Notre Dame (6) | 1,510 |
| 5 | Texas | 1,483 |
| 6 | Indiana (8) | 1,440 |
| 7 | Miami (1) | 1,379 |
| 8 | Texas A&M | 1,131 |
| 9 | Ole Miss | 1,102 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | 1,047 |
| 11 | LSU | 988 |
| 12 | Texas Tech | 983 |
| 13 | Alabama | 904 |
| 14 | BYU | 839 |
| 14 | USC | 839 |
| 16 | Michigan | 718 |
| 17 | Washington | 501 |
| 18 | Penn State | 482 |
| 19 | SMU | 434 |
| 20 | Tennessee | 394 |
| 21 | Utah | 304 |
| 22 | Iowa | 260 |
| 23 | Houston | 252 |
| 24 | Louisville | 194 |
| 25 | Missouri | 117 |
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.
| Team | Rank | First-place votes |
|---|---|---|
| Ohio State | 1 | 40 |
| Oregon | 2 | 14 |
| Indiana | 6 | 8 |
| Notre Dame | 4 | 6 |
| Miami | 7 | 1 |
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.
| AP | Coaches | |
|---|---|---|
| Released | 17 Aug | 4 Aug |
| No. 1 votes | 40 of 69 | 38 |
| Only in this poll | Louisville 24 | Clemson 23 |
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:
| Team | AP | Coaches |
|---|---|---|
| Notre Dame | 4 | 5 |
| Texas | 5 | 4 |
| Ole Miss | 9 | 10 |
| Oklahoma | 10 | 9 |
| LSU | 11 | 13 |
| Alabama | 13 | 11 |
| BYU | 14 | 15 |
| Washington | 17 | 19 |
| Penn State | 18 | 17 |
| SMU | 19 | 20 |
| Tennessee | 20 | 18 |
| Houston | 23 | 24 |
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.
| Conference | Teams |
|---|---|
| SEC | 9 |
| Big Ten | 8 |
| Big 12 | 4 |
| ACC | 3 |
| Independent | 1 |
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, Louisiana 4, James Madison 3, Auburn 3, Memphis 2, California 2, Liberty 1, Western Michigan 1, Tulane 1, Virginia 1.
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?
Ohio State opens at home against Ball State on Saturday 5 September.
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
| Source | What it supports here |
|---|---|
| AP Top 25 college football poll | The ranking order, the full voter list used to confirm the 69-strong panel, and the others-receiving-votes list |
| CBS Sports: AP Top 25 preseason 2026 | Points totals and first-place votes, and the 17 August release date |
| Yahoo Sports: 2026 AP preseason Top 25 | Independent confirmation of every points figure and the conference counts |
| Sports Illustrated: AP Top 25 preseason poll 2026 | Third confirmation of the ranking, and that five teams received first-place votes |
| Sports Illustrated: Coaches Poll preseason 2026 | The Coaches Poll top 25, its 4 August release date and its first-place votes |
Checked 17 August 2026. No affiliate links, and no payment was received for any link on this page.
How we verified this
The ranking order was read from AP’s own poll page and cross-checked against three independent write-ups. CBS Sports, Yahoo Sports and Sports Illustrated each publish the full 25, and all three match AP’s own ordering exactly, including the tie at 14th between BYU and USC.
The panel size was verified by counting, not by quoting. AP’s page carries the full list of voters by name; counting them gives 69. The first-place votes reported by the secondary sources — Ohio State 40, Oregon 14, Indiana 8, Notre Dame 6, Miami 1 — sum to exactly 69. Because every voter casts exactly one first-place vote, that sum matching the panel size is proof the first-place distribution is complete, with no team omitted.
The Coaches Poll panel size is derived, and labelled as derived. Neither source used states how many coaches vote. Their first-place votes total 72, which by the same logic implies a 72-member panel, but no source published that figure so it is presented as arithmetic rather than as a stated fact.
One coaches-poll figure looked wrong and was checked rather than dropped. Indiana ranking sixth while holding the second-most first-place votes is unusual enough to suspect a column error. Two independent sources report it identically, and a third description — six teams receiving first-place votes, three from the Big Ten, two from the SEC and one independent — matches the six named teams exactly. The figure survived the check, so it is reported.
The poll comparison was computed, not eyeballed. Setting the two rankings side by side programmatically gives 24 teams in common, 12 at identical ranks and 12 differing by one or two places, with one team unique to each poll. Those are the numbers quoted.
The conference counts are our own, not repeated from coverage. Assigning each of the 25 teams to its 2026 conference and counting gives SEC 9, Big Ten 8, Big 12 4, ACC 3 and one independent, totalling 25. That reproduces the SEC and Big Ten figures reported elsewhere, which is why they are stated plainly here.
One entry in “others receiving votes” could not be reconciled. Two secondary sources list Louisiana with four points, in the same position in the order. Our own read of AP’s page did not show it while matching every other entry. It is included below with this note rather than silently resolved either way.
The two polls were released 13 days apart — the Coaches Poll on 4 August, the AP poll on 17 August — so they are not two readings of the same moment, and some of the differences between them may simply be time.
No betting odds, futures, title prices or win totals appear anywhere on this page. That is a site-wide rule. This page reports a published poll and the arithmetic within it.
We make no prediction of our own. The historical note about preseason No. 1 teams is a record of what has already happened, not a forecast about this season.