The AP Top 25, the longest-running college football poll of its kind, will begin its 81st year with the much-awaited preseason edition on Sunday, Aug. 21.
It will mark the 66th year for the preseason rankings, selected by an expert panel of sports writers and broadcasters from AP-affiliated media around the country. The poll will be released on AP lines to customers, as well as posted on AP’s college football site, collegefootball.ap.org, at 10 a.m. ET Sunday. AP will also provide analysis and additional details on the preseason poll via those platforms.
All AP customers can leverage the popularity of the AP poll to grow digital traffic and new revenue through AP’s locally branded College Football Digital News Experience. Newspapers that subscribe to AP Sports will also get paginated pages designed by GateHouse Media’s Center for News & Design that highlight the poll results for use in print, each with space available for local advertising or content.
The Associated Press began its college football poll on Oct. 19, 1936, and it is now the longest-running poll of those that award national titles at the end of the season. The preseason poll was started in 1950. All 1,103 weekly AP polls were tabulated this summer to determine the 100 top teams of all time, listed at collegefootball.ap.org/ap-poll-all-time.
A panel of 61 sports writers and broadcasters from around the country votes weekly to decide the AP Top 25. All voters have an extensive background in covering college football. The poll is determined by a simple points system based on how each voter ranks college football’s best teams. A team receives 25 points for each first place vote, 24 for second place and so on through to the 25th team, which receives one point. The rankings are set by listing the teams’ point totals from highest to lowest. The mathematical formula is the same as the one used for the AP Top 25 rankings for college men’s and women’s basketball.
Follow the poll and related sports coverage on Facebook and Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Top25.
Contact
For media inquiries:
Paul Colford
Vice President and Director of Media Relations
The Associated Press
212-621-1895
pcolford@ap.org
For sponsorship or revenue opportunities:
Barry Bedlan
Deputy Director of Sports Products
The Associated Press
972-677-2270
bbedlan@ap.org
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