Introduction

For as long as the world remembers, college football has been governed by the AP Poll, a weekly ranking of teams that is compiled by 62 sportswriters around the nation. It’s designed to be as impartial as possible. Each sportswriter provides their own ranking and the final ranking is cumulative based on total points; 25 points for a top-ranked team, 24 for a second-ranked team, and so on. But the AP Poll is obviously not perfect, since at the end of the day it’s reliant on the opinions of the sportswriters themselves.

Just earlier in September there was a minor controversy that was kept under the radar. Haley Sawyer, a USC beat writer who serves as one of the AP Poll voters, had ranked Florida at #16 in her Week 2 poll. Florida proceeded to get upset by unranked USF, who had just beaten #25 Boise State. However, Sawyer proceeded to rank Florida higher at #14 in her Week 3 poll and leave USF out of her poll entirely. While USF eventually got a spot on the final Week 3 poll, this raised questions around fans about the legitimacy of the AP Poll voters.

While the AP Poll can generally be seen as not legitimate to some, there are many more that can see the cracks in the Preseason edition. I’m here to show you that these sportswriters rely on the “hype” on college football teams rather than the analytical aspects.

The Woes of the Preseason Poll

Probably the highest amount of criticism about the AP Poll stems from the Preseason edition. Historically, the Preseason Poll misses on a few top-10 teams completely (as in, they rank out of the final AP Poll).

Looking at the plot, there hasn’t been an “error-less” Preseason top-10 since 2019. Oh, and it’s not looking good this year either.

The Narratives behind the Hype

This year so far, there are 3 Preseason top-10 teams with miniscule odds to even land on the final AP poll:

• Penn State (#2). Landing in the top 5 in returning production, including their star QB Drew Allar, Penn State carried a lot of momentum from last year, placing 5th in the final AP Poll after a narrow loss to the CFP finalists Notre Dame. However, a bad loss to unranked, winless UCLA, following a season-ending injury to Allar, caused an implosion. Coach James Franklin was fired and the team has yet to recover.
• Clemson (#4). Another top-5 team in returning production which included star QB Cade Klubnik and well-respected HC Dabo Swinney, Clemson failed to win by big margins against mid-major teams and lost to several unranked teams to start the season.
• LSU (#9). Bringing back star QB Garrett Nussmeier and a loaded recruiting class at key positions, they actually rose in the poll early on with a win against Clemson. But down the line, LSU failed to find success in the SEC West division at all and Nussmeier missed games due to injury.

The Factors behind the Hype

The AP Poll claims to look at three factors when initially ranking a college football team: the incoming recruiting class, the returning production, and the success in the previous year(s). Of course, there are other factors, such as brand name (especially for SEC schools) and coaching hires, but quantitatively, the aforementioned three factors are pretty good indicators to look at.

This plot compares each FBS team’s returning production to the AP Poll’s change in votes from the 2024 final rankings poll to the 2025 preseason poll. The brighter the color in a data point, the higher placed they were in the final poll last year. The “cluster” of not-so-purple points on the far-right indicate teams that had high returning production as well as a good finish last year, which the AP Poll rewarded with a swing in points. The three teams that stand out here are Clemson, Penn State, and Illinois. Now here’s the thing. These teams were ranked #4, #2, and #12 respectively. As of Week 15, they are all unranked. The AP Preseason poll took the momentum of these three teams from last year into great account, but for the most part, these teams underperformed.

We can see that these teams did not have the strongest recruiting classes nationally as well. Here’s a look at each team’s recruiting score (via On3 Recruiting) compared to their AP Preseason Poll votes, sized by their average NIL spending (via On3 Recruiting).

Penn State and Clemson, who had medium-sized NIL spending, stray a little from the obvious cluster of teams here, which consist of big-brand teams such as Texas, Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon, Alabama, etc. It’s clear that a skillful, expensive recruiting class can be a solid indicator as to how well a team can perform down the line, but is not a sole predictor. The AP Poll, however, seems to argue that previous performance and returning production can justify a high ranking to start the year. There does exist a flipped example here. LSU, who was ranked #9 in the preseason poll, was clearly ranked high due to their strong recruiting class, but underperformed; when looking at the first plot, we can see that they did not have high returning production nor a good finish to their season last year.

When looking at any team that has seemed to underperform, we can draw a quick correlation between a “hype” factor (recruiting power, returning production, or last season’s ranking). The obvious issue is that such a prestigious poll that determines nearly all aspects of the sport, from the media to the CFP, should be objective and in all honesty, automated. I want to bring into light an answer to this problem.

An Alternative to the AP Poll as a Whole?

College football rankings are better with attention to analytics. Enter SP+. It was developed by the highly-reputed yet now defunct Football Outsiders back in 2008. Like the AP Poll, SP+ was developed to be “predictive and forward-facing”, acting as a tool for fans to determine the top teams in college football. Unlike the AP Poll, SP+ is not there to rank teams based on their record or their “clutch” wins. Instead, it acts as an “sustainability” tracker that rewards and penalizes teams based on expected game performance, not on actual game outcome. This is critical as teams that had impressive records one year could be deemed “unimpressive” by SP+ the next year (and vice versa), while the AP Poll will use this as “hype”, often overrating teams in the process. It may help to see how SP+ and the AP Preseason Poll correlate, as well as how each of them correlate with eventual rankings.

Teams that are more to the left of the point cloud indicate teams that the preseason poll ranked higher than the SP+. Most of them (Penn State, Clemson, LSU, ASU, Illinois, etc.) have underwhelmed this season. On the contrary, teams that are more to the right of the point cloud indicate teams that the SP+ ranked higher than the preseason poll; Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama, and Michigan have maintained their rankings in the latest edition of the poll. When running linear regressions on SP+ vs. Current Poll and Preseason Poll vs. Current Poll, the correlation coefficients are 0.52 and 0.44 respectively; SP+ correlates slightly better to current polling versus the Preseason Poll itself!

Obviously, SP+ is not entirely perfect, but as mentioned, it does a slightly more accurate job at the end of the day. It helps to look back at some of the teams that underwhelmed this season and see how SP+ specifically graded them:

• Texas - 1st in AP, 5th in SP+
• Penn State - 2nd in AP, 4th in SP+
• Clemson - 4th in AP, 10th in SP+
• LSU - 9th in AP, 11th in SP+
• Arizona State - 11th in AP, 30th in SP+
• Illinois - 12th in AP, 27th in SP+

It helps to know that SP+ is heavily reliant on recruiting at the start of the season.

Therefore, even SP+ cannot anticipate the rise of smaller-market teams like Utah, BYU, Texas Tech and Indiana rising to the top of the polls this year. However, it is able to do one thing that the AP poll has struggled to do year after year, and that is NOT to overrate teams based on their hype.

Conclusion

The AP Poll is broken. There always happens to be a group of teams that are massively overrated to start a season, and down the line, we end up questioning, “How were these teams this high-ranked to begin with?” Factors such as overreliance on returning production and previous team success highlight the idea that the AP Poll relies on “hype” when polling. Meanwhile, there can be an alternative to one day replace the way we poll teams. SP+ is able to rely on team stability and recruiting to “debunk” the overrated teams and provide a more accurate polling compared to eventual rankings.

At the end of the day, college football is more fun when it is subjective. So perhaps controversy is what’s needed, especially in this media-driven world. The AP Poll may never go away, but as long as it’s around, it will always be controversial and amusing.