Georgia head coach Kirby Smart speaks during Southeastern Conference NCAA college football media days, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Jeffrey McWhorter)
By RALPH D. RUSSO, AP College Football Writer
Georgia is ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press preseason poll of college football’s top 25 for the second consecutive year as the superconference era begins with the SEC and Big Ten dominating the top 10 rankings.
The Bulldogs received 46 first-place votes and 1,532 points in the Top 25 released Monday, and the SEC heavyweight finished comfortably ahead of Ohio State (No. 2, 15 first-place votes and 1,490 points) of the Big Ten.
New Big Ten member Oregon is No. 3 and received one first-place vote from the panel of 62 media members who cover college football. Texas, which is in the Southeastern Conference this season with Georgia, is fourth.
The Big Ten and SEC each have four teams in the top 10.
Conference realignment reduced the Power Five to the Power Four, with the Pac-12 down to just two schools. The Big Ten now has 18 schools. The Atlantic Coast Conference has 17 football teams, and the SEC and Big 12 each have 16.
All this movement resulted in an unprecedented preseason poll with only four conferences represented: The SEC leads with nine ranked teams. The Big Ten has six, the Big 12 has five and the ACC has four.
Alabama starts its first season without coach Nick Saban since 2006 as the No. 5 seed. With No. 6 Mississippi, the SEC has half of the top six players from the previous season.
Independent team Notre Dame is the highest-ranked team outside of the SEC and Big Ten at No. 7.
There are four top-10 teams in the Big Ten, No. 8 Penn State and No. 9 Michigan. Florida State from the ACC is No. 10.
Title game finalists
The defending national champion Wolverines were losing coach Jim Harbaugh, quarterback JJ McCarthy and 12 other players selected in April’s NFL Draft. All of those departures resulted in Michigan receiving the lowest preseason ranking for a defending national champion since 2011, when Auburn finished 23rd after the departure of Cam Newton.
Before that, the last defending national champion was ranked lower than 7th in the following preseason poll: Colorado at 13th in 1991.
Washington, which lost to Michigan in the College Football Playoff final, suffered an even bigger fall after losing its head coach (Kalen DeBoer replaced Saban at Alabama), its star quarterback and a mountain of talent to the draft and the transfer market. The Huskies are the first team to reach the CFP and be unranked the following season, and the first team since Army in 1951 to be unranked after finishing the previous season ranked No. 2 in the AP poll. The rankings at the time were a top 20.
The only team to finish No. 1 and start the next season unranked was Minnesota in 1961, but the AP poll only had a top 10 ranking at the time.
Top-ranked ‘Dawgs
Georgia started last season ranked No. 1 with goals for a third straight national championship. Coach Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs stayed No. 1 for the entire regular season and then missed the four-team playoffs because they lost the SEC title game to Alabama.
“We are facing new challenges this year,” Smart said this at the SEC Media Days. “We have no grudges against people who want to use that as motivation. I have never used a failure from the previous year as motivation, nor have I ever used a success from the previous year as motivation. We will not do that this year. That is not who we are. We want to reinvent ourselves to present ourselves in the best possible light.”
With the playoffs expanding from four to twelve teams this season, there is more room for error.
The Bulldogs have a 42-2 record over the last three seasons and are back in good shape. Quarterback Carson Beck leads the offense and edge rusher Mykel Williams is on track to become Georgia’s next defensive star.
Beck is a rarity in college football these days, a star quarterback in his fifth season at the same school who waited three years to become a starter. Beck completed 72% of his passes last year, with 24 touchdowns and six interceptions.
“He is a great elder for us and a great example of resilience in college football,” Said Smart.
Repeating as the preseason No. 1 team is a new trend. Over the past eight seasons, Alabama has had the preseason No. 1 ranking for three (2016-18) and two (2021-22) years. Clemson was at the top of the 2019 and 2020 preseason rankings.
Georgia will try to become the 12th team since the AP preseason poll began in 1950 to start at No. 1 and finish at No. 1. The last team to do so was Alabama in 2017.
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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP
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