College Football Playoff rankings won’t be upon us until November, so the Associated Press Top 25 is going to be the standard for the meantime. Oh, and the Coaches Poll is still around for some reason.
2016 college football rankings: 2 ACC teams in new top 3 of both polls
We’ll add post-Week 1 rankings here as they arrive this fine Tuesday morning. Playoff rankings won’t show up for a couple more months.
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Since Week 1 spanned from August 26 through September 5, we’re just now getting the first non-preseason rankings of the season. Usually they come out on Sunday mornings. Things will normalize in a few days.
Alabama remains the extremely obvious No. 1 after humiliating USC, Clemson hangs on at No. 2 after winning at Auburn, and then things change. Former No. 4 Florida State impressed against Ole Miss, former No. 3 Oklahoma’s upset loss to Houston is the biggest shakeup, and upset wins by Texas, Texas A&M, and Wisconsin also mean big debuts.
None of these votes matter in the long-term sense, but here’s an update on the national perception of the country’s best programs heading into Week 2. (Notes below on the rankings listed here.)
| AP (Previous) | Coaches (Previous) | S&P+ | Massey | |
| 1 | Alabama (1) | Alabama (1) | Alabama | Alabama |
| 2 | Clemson (2) | Clemson (2) | Clemson | Ohio State |
| 3 | Florida State (4) | Florida State (4) | LSU | Clemson |
| 4 | Ohio State (6) | Ohio State (5) | Michigan | Stanford |
| 5 | Michigan (7) | Stanford (7) | Florida State | Florida State |
| 6 | Houston (15) | Michigan (8) | Oklahoma | Oklahoma |
| 7 | Stanford (8) | Houston (13) | Ole Miss | Michigan |
| 8 | Washington (14) | Michigan State (11) | Tennessee | Houston |
| 9 | Georgia (18) | Georgia (16) | Ohio State | Tennessee |
| 10 | Wisconsin (NR) | Iowa (15) | Washington | TCU |
| 11 | Texas (NR) | Washington (18) | USC | Ole Miss |
| 12 | Michigan State (12) | TCU (14) | Oregon | LSU |
| 13 | Louisville (19) | Oklahoma (3) | Stanford | Baylor |
| 14 | Oklahoma (3) | Tennessee (10) | Georgia | Michigan State |
| 15 | TCU (13) | Louisville (23) | UCLA | Georgia |
| 16 | Iowa (17) | Wisconsin (27) | Louisville | Wisconsin |
| 17 | Tennessee (9) | Oklahoma State (19) | Notre Dame | Iowa |
| 18 | Notre Dame (10) | Ole Miss (12) | Arkansas | Oklahoma State |
| 19 | Ole Miss (5) | Baylor (21) | Baylor | Oregon |
| 20 | Texas A&M (NR) | Texas (32) | Florida | Washington |
| 21 | LSU (5) | Notre Dame (9) | Oklahoma State | Arkansas |
| 22 | Oklahoma State (21) | LSU (6) | Mississippi State | Notre Dame |
| 23 | Baylor (23) | Oregon (22) | Michigan State | Utah |
| 24 | Oregon (24) | Texas A&M (31) | Auburn | North Carolina |
| 25 | Miami (NR) | Florida (25) | TCU | Louisville |
The four rankings used here
The Associated Press Top 25: The longest-running and best-respected human poll. Didn't have any official bearing on the latter years of the BCS, and doesn't have any official bearing on the Playoff. Most outlets (including SB Nation) will use the AP's rankings as the standard until the committee takes over in November, though. Usually comes out on Sundays about 2 p.m. ET.
The USA Today Coaches Poll: Formerly part of the BCS, and now just a poll. It tends to react more cautiously than the AP's. Though polling athletic departments in order to rank other athletic departments is dubious, we still want multiple human polls in here, and this is the other big one. Releases early Sunday afternoons.
The Massey computer composite: A collection of every rating out there. We include the latest version as of publication. (It does also include the two human polls, but they can't sway it all that much.)
Bill Connelly's S&P+ ratings: SB Nation's favored advanced stat, which arrives a bit later than the others. An important thing to keep in mind: for the first few weeks, it also factors in preseason projections. This metric parses each team's efficiency and explosiveness and adjusts it for strength of opposition, and over the years, it's proved to be a very strong predictor against the Vegas spread.
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