The 2018 season’s final AP Poll is here. Clemson’s No. 1, but LOL at the No. 7 tie

Clemson established itself as the best team in college football, beyond any shadow of a doubt, by dropkicking Alabama over a cliff in the Playoff National Championship. The Tigers finished the 2018 season as FBS’ lone unbeaten team and the only team with a valid championship claim, and they’re atop the year-end AP Poll.

Alabama is No. 2, as you’d also expect in a year where the Tigers and Tide entrenched themselves as being way better than everybody else. These programs will go into 2019 as plurality favorites, if not odds-on favorites, to see each other in this same game for a fifth time in six years (and a fourth national title game in five).

The most exciting thing about this poll has nothing to do with the top of it, though. It’s what’s happening at No. 7, where Florida and Georgia are tied.

The new Florida-Georgia line, if may I say so myself.

If you’re looking for a kind of silly, kind of real way-too-early preseason top 25, I made you one here. If you’re looking for a computerized system that can better assess teams’ true quality in 2018, you can get the pre-Championship version here, via Bill Connelly. And if you’re looking for a ranking of rankings, that’s here.

This final AP Poll is one of the more important rankings floating around the sport, because it’s the one people tend to use with terms like “ranked finishes” and whatnot.