The Associated Press has been a historic part of college football, running its signature Top 25 poll for nearly a full century. This fall, the Associated Press is celebrating its 90th straight year of running a Top 25 poll. The 2026 preseason Top 25 rankings were released earlier this week, with Ohio State coming in at No. 1 overall.
There are 69 voters in the AP Top 25 poll – and every voter’s ballot can be seen in full here.
But while the AP’s preseason Top 25 poll has long drawn a ton of attention, should it exist? There are some in the college football media world that argue it shouldn’t. ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt is among them.
“The point is that you’re selling stories and people and programs right now, in August, without any real knowledge for sure about what’s what,” he said last week on his podcast, SVPod.
SVP believes that everyone is just guessing at this time of the year.
“Look at last year as an example of where teams began the season, and rankings, and it will happen again,” Van Pelt said. “Because there will be teams that you just presume are going to be good based on the pedigree of their past, some of the people that you know, looking at the portal acquisitions and thinking, ‘That should work.’ But you don’t know.”
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With the Associated Press celebrating its 90th season this fall, and the talk surrounding Top 25 polls growing in the College Football Playoff era, I spoke with the AP’s Global Sports Editor, Josh Hoffner, about the preseason poll, how it works, what the AP wants it to be in this age of college sports and more.
Our full conversation is below.
Q&A with AP Global Sports Editor Josh Hoffner
The Spun: The AP Poll is celebrating its historic 90th year this fall. What does it mean to the AP to have been such a consistent part of college football history?
Josh Hoffner: We are incredibly honored at AP to be part of the poll and its rich history going back 90 years. It’s so woven into the fabric of college football in America. And the same spirit that guided that original poll in 1936 – tapping into the college football expertise among media members around the country – still holds true today.
The preseason AP Poll Top 25 was released on Monday. Is there anything new or different about the poll this year, from the voting pool to the way the Top 25 will be released throughout the season?
The cadence will be the same. The preseason poll launched this week, the first regular season edition comes out after Labor Day and then Sundays the rest of the year. The voting panel has some new faces, and we are doing more direct engagement with audiences. For example, longtime poll voter and college football reporter Scott Hamilton joined our live blog on APNews.com this week to engage directly with audiences about his process and decision-making. It is great to push that expertise out to audiences and enhance the sense of community surrounding college football and the Top 25.
We have also made some refinements to our “Fan Poll” in 2026. This is a section of our website where audiences can submit their own poll after the games are wrapped Saturday and see how their choices stack up against the actual poll. It’s a fun way to engage with audiences, who can collect points based on their success. (To be clear, the fan poll is not part of the actual Top 25 vote)
We are also doing more college football quizzes and games on our Top 25 hub. Again, it’s all about community and this wonderful, magical experience that is college football in the fall in America.
ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt recently said he thinks preseason Top 25 polls are pointless, arguing that “no one knows anything” at this stage. Others in the industry feel the same way. How does the AP feel about the value of the preseason Top 25 poll and whether or not it should exist?
I’m a big fan of SVP and appreciate his viewpoint. At the same time, we’re big believers in the important role the preseason poll continues to play. Nothing is an exact science at any level of preseason sports coverage. But we can still do our best to offer an early snapshot that is powered by college football beat writers and expertise in more than 30 states around the country. It’s ultimately an important benchmark to start the process. And audiences and sports fans have gone 7 long months without college football and are very much eager to engage with the content. So we think there’s clearly demand for a preseason poll.
Related to that, some argue that certain schools with big brands get the benefit of the doubt in human polls, while other schools might not. How does the AP feel about perceived human bias in Top 25 polls and if certain schools are favored more than others? Are there guardrails in place to prevent serious bias from voters?
I actually think the AP poll IS the guardrail against bias, based on the way it’s set up. These are independent college football journalists who are making informed decisions based on first-hand coverage of the sport. The geographic footprint is impressive. We have beat writers covering teams at the city level, in big cities like Boston, Atlanta and Houston, in smaller states like West Virginia and Wyoming and in college towns like Lawrence and Charlottesville. We have national reporters at major outlets like ESPN and the Athletic. We have a mix of TV stations and newspapers. It all adds up to a wonderful cross-section and it counteracts the possibility of bias. In the event of egregious bias, we reserve the right to remove voters or not bring them back the following year. But overall, it’s a very stand-up cohort.
The College Football Playoff has obviously become the main way college football teams grade their success, and there’s talk of more expansion. Does the AP Poll view itself as a standalone entity or a supplement to the College Football Playoff?
We believe strongly that the poll will remain an important part of the sports media ecosystem regardless of what happens next with the CFP. Fans and audiences have come to respect and appreciate the independent nature of the AP poll that is distinct from the CFP panel and its decisions. We also have the AP All-American teams, in addition to season-ending awards like the AP Player and Coach of the Year. So our inventory of college football awards is quite strong and distinct.
Moving forward, do you want the AP Poll to change or evolve in any way given college football’s constantly changing landscape?
We will always look at the panel and make sure it’s reflective of the times and how audiences consume college football. So it could include more podcaster partners, for example. In the past, the AP college football poll has had a corporate sponsor. That is something we are exploring again given the consumer demand for the poll and not just for college football. We also run the AP Top 25 college basketball polls (men’s and women’s) which play important roles in setting the college basketball agenda. So you can see how our poll business has the potential to grow quite a bit.
What do you want fans to know about the AP Poll and why they should still pay attention to it in 2026?
I hope conversations like this can demystify the Top 25 a little bit. It can be a bit daunting for fans to understand the many awards/honors across the various sports. The AP Top 25 is a special thing given its coast-to-coast panel of media members and its deep roots.
