It’s time to talk about the college football AP Top 25. Time and time again the voters get it wrong, leaving many people, including myself, frustrated. The top 25 is supposed to identify the best 25 teams in the country, however it has turned out to be the most popular teams who get the spotlight.
The preseason top 25 seemed more like a popularity vote than anything else. One example is Alabama, a team that finished last year with a loss to unranked 7-5 Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl. This loss handed them a 9-4 season, which was its first 4-loss season since 2007 which was Nick Saban’s first year as head coach.
Alabama was ranked 8th in the preseason poll after losing 12 starters from last year’s team including QB Jalen Milroe. So, after a disappointing season and losing multiple key starters, the AP voters ranked Alabama 8th. Alabama was only ranked that high because of its name and program history. Losing to Florida State, which only won two games last year, 31-17 only helps support that argument.
Another example is Florida, who was ranked 15th in the preseason poll, even though it had a record of 8-5 last year. The team’s 2025 recruiting class did come in as the ninth ranked class in the nation, but the 70th ranked transfer class. . This is proving to be true after the Gators have lost three of their first four games including one to South Florida who was unranked at the time.
So, now as the season is three weeks in and we have seen some big upsets and what teams are like this year, the poll may have become even more controversial. It all started within week one, when maybe the upset of the year was when unranked Florida State, who went 2-10 last year, beat #8 ranked Alabama in Tallahassee 31-17. FSU dominated the entire game with Alabama’s defense never finding an answer and its offense not being able to move the ball down the field, which was a recipe for disaster.
It got a lot worse and I’m not joking. Clemson, who was pre-season #4, lost to LSU and only fell to 8th the next week. They should have fallen pretty far outside the top 15. They went on to lose to powerhouse teams like Georgia Tech and Syracuse.
This continues to prove that the early rankings are just a straight up guess on who they think is good. They’d be better off waiting till week five or six to put out a ranking, since by then we have a good understanding on who is good or not and would have more accurate rankings.
After Alabama’s collapse to Florida State, the Crimson Tide dropped all the way to #21, which I believe is the right place for them after putting up a terrible showing in week one. For the Noles, they jumped all the way to number 14 in the poll after previously being unranked. I understand it was a pretty big win for the Noles, but the only reason they jumped so high was because of their name and the name of whom they beat. They should be ranked, but only in the 18-23 range.
The AP released its newest poll for week 3 and it felt like each week kept getting worse and worse. First off, the top 3 stayed the same, but after Georgia only beat Austin Peay 28-6, they fell two spots down to 6th. Notre Dame moved up a spot somehow, even though they didn’t play a game and were winless.
These polls main issues are that early in the season they don’t mean much with top teams always getting upset every year, many teams who many thought to be really good just aren’t and many teams who nobody had on their radar coming into the year, are picking up steam. My main problem is them not dropping teams far enough after almost losing or struggling heavily against a team. Clemson was that team in week three poll, barely beating Troy 27-16 after trailing 16-3 at half. They only fell to number 12 in contrast to Michigan who fell all the way down to 23 after losing a close one to 18th ranked Oklahoma.
As I said before, the top 25 is supposed to be the best 25 teams in the country, who have the best records and best quality wins, not the top 25 teams all time historically based on history and popularity.
An example of this is some voters still had Notre Dame, who was 0-2, ranked in their top 15.
The voters are all over the place, with all of them having different ranking criterias and lacking consistency week to week. Examples of the inconsistencies are, some vote on who has the best quality wins, on team record, and overall talent and projecting the team for the rest of the season. There needs to be a more concrete criteria for voting based on statistics and facts, not opinions.
The AP Poll is broken and is in need of immediate changes to help make it a better, more effective poll.
