Clemson leads the way in AP preseason Top 25
Cross off another milestone for Clemson, college football’s newest superpower.
For the first time, the defending national champion Tigers are No. 1 in The Associated Press preseason Top 25. The Tigers won the program’s second national title in three seasons behind freshman quarterback Trevor Lawrence in January.
Alabama, coming off a 4416 loss to Clemson in the College Football Playoff championship, is No. 2. Clemson received 52 first-place votes and Alabama received the other 10 from the media. Clemson snaps a record-tying string of three consecutive years in which Alabama was preseason No. 1.
Georgia is No. 3, followed by No. 4 Oklahoma and No. 5 Ohio State.
Clemson’s rise under Coach Dabo Swinney has been uncommon in college football. The school won the national championship in 1981 under Danny Ford, but mostly it had resided on a tier well below the traditional national powers. Clemson football was usually good and sometimes excellent, but never this.
Last season’s championship made Clemson the 12th school with at least three AP titles since the poll started in 1936.
The Tigers enter 2019 with a 15-game winning streak and eight consecutive double-digit victory seasons. Since 2015, when they lost the national championship game to Alabama, the Tigers are 55-4.
Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide are also 55-4 in the last four seasons.
Clemson and Alabama have split the last four national championships, played in the last four playoffs and are poised to make it five in a row. This will be the third time since 2016 that the Tigers and Tide have started the season Nos. 1 and 2 in the Top 25.
Last year’s Clemson team was highlighted by a defensive line that had three starters selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, and a fourth taken in the fourth round.
The Tigers have some rebuilding to do on that side of the ball, but recent history suggests reinforcements are ready. This year, Lawrence and the offense will be the headliner. The first freshman quarterback in more than three decades to lead a team to a national championship, Lawrence will be joined by star receivers Tee Higgins (12 touchdowns) and Justyn Ross (9 touchdowns) and game-breaking running back Travis Etienne (8.1 yards per carry).
Clemson is the 23rd team to be preseason No. 1 and the first first-timer since Georgia in 2008. The Tigers will try to become the 12th team to start No. 1 and finish No. 1 since the preseason poll started in 1950. The last to do it was Alabama in 2017. Only two teams have gone wire-to-wire as No. 1: Florida State in 1999 and Southern California in 2004.
Alabama has now been No. 2 to start the season nine times, matching Oklahoma for the most in AP poll history. Just as many teams (11) have started No. 2 and won the title as No. 1.
The Crimson Tide return quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, the Heisman Trophy runner-up, and an array of weapons, too.
CONSISTENT BUCKEYES
Ohio State is ranked in the preseason for the 31st consecutive season (1989-2019), the third best all-time streak behind only Penn State (34 years, 1968-2002) and Nebraska (33 years, 1970-2002). The Buckeyes have been ranked in 66 of 70 preseason polls, most of any school. The Buckeyes were unranked in 1966-67, 1979 and 1988.
TOUGH DRAW
No. 12 Texas A&M and South Carolina will each play the preseason top three. Only three times previously has a team had the entire preseason top three on its schedule:
■ In 1968, Northwestern faced Purdue, USC and Notre Dame and went 0-3.
■ In 1972, Minnesota faced Nebraska, Colorado and Ohio State and went 0-3.
■ In 1975, Missouri faced Oklahoma, Alabama and Michigan and went 1-2, beating No. 2 Alabama to open the season.
RANKED VS. RANKED
The first week of the season with a full schedule of games is lacking marquee matchups.
No. 16 Auburn faces No. 11 Oregon in Arlington, Texas. It’s the only Week 1 game with two ranked teams. The first regular-season Top 25 will be released Sept. 3, a Tuesday. The rest of the regular-season rankings will be released on Sundays.