UGA, Ohio State, Oregon leading preseason AP poll
Aug 12, 2024, 12:19 PM ET
Georgia is No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 preseason college football survey for the 2nd straight year as the superconference era begins with the SEC and Big Ten controling the leading 10 of the rankings.The Bulldogs received 46 first-place votes and 1,532 points in the Leading 25 released Monday, and the SEC powerhouse completed comfortably ahead of No. 2 Ohio State(15 first-place votes and 1,490 points)of the Huge Ten.New Big Ten member Oregon is No. 3, receiving one first-place vote from the panel of 62 media members who cover college football. Texas, which joins Georgia in the Southeastern Conference this season, is fourth.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated The Big Ten and SEC each have 4 teams in the top 10. Conference realignment has actually decreased the Power 5 to the Power
4, with the Pac-12 whittled to simply two schools. The Big 10 now has 18 schools.
The Atlantic Coast Conference has 17 football teams, and the SEC and Big 12 each have 16. All the movement developed an unmatched preseason survey with simply four conferences represented: The SEC leads with 9 ranked groups, the Big Ten has six, the Huge 12 five and the ACC four.Alabama, in its very first season without coach Nick Saban given that 2006, starts No. 5. No. 6 Ole Miss provides the SEC four of the preseason top six.Independent Notre Dame is the highest-ranked team from outside the SEC and Big 10 at No. 7. No. 8 Penn State and No. 9 Michigan give the Huge Ten four top-10 teams. Florida State from the ACC is No. 10.1.
Georgia(46) 13. LSU 2. Ohio State (15)14. Clemson 3. Oregon( 1)15. Tennessee 4. Texas 16. Oklahoma 5. Alabama 17. Oklahoma St. 6. Ole Miss 18. Kansas St. 7. Notre Dame 19. Miami 8. Penn State 20. Texas A&M 9
7 in the following preseason survey was Colorado at No. 13 in 1991. Washington, which lost to Michigan in the College Football Playoff national championship, took an even larger fall after losing its head coach( Kalen DeBoer changed Saban at Alabama), star quarterback and a mountain of talent to the draft and transfer website. The Huskies are the first string to reach the CFP and be unranked the next season.Top-ranked Dawgs Georgia began last season at No. 1 in pursuit of a record third straight championship game.
Coach Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs stayed there the whole routine season, then missed out on the four-team playoff by losing the SEC title game to Alabama.”We’re dealing with new difficulties this year, “Smart stated at SEC media days.”We do not have a chip on our shoulder in terms of people trying to utilize that as inspiration. I’ve never used a failure from the previous year as motivation and never ever utilized the success of a previous year as inspiration; we will not do that this year. That’s not who we are. We wish to re-create ourselves to remain in the best light we can.”There will be more room for mistake this season with the playoff expanding from 4 to 12 teams.The Bulldogs are 42-2 over the previous 3 seasons and packed again. Quarterback Carson Beck leads the offense and edge rusher Mykel Williams remains in line to be the next protective star at Georgia.Beck is a rarity in college football nowadays, a star quarterback in his 5th season with the very same school who waited three years to become starter. He completed 72 %of his passes last year, with 24 goals and 6 interceptions.”He is a fantastic senior for us and terrific example
of resiliency in college football,”Smart said.Repeating as preseason No. 1 is a recent trend. Returning eight seasons, Alabama had different streaks of 3 (2016-18 )and 2(2021-22)years as preseason No. 1. Clemson was ranked initially in the 2019 and 2020 preseasons.Georgia will try to end up being the 12th group because the AP preseason survey started in 1950 to
start No. 1 and end up No. 1. The last was Alabama in 2017.