College Football Rankings 2016: Projected AP Top 25 After National Championship
By Zach Bigalke
After this year’s bowl games, how will teams be ranked in the AP Top 25? Click through to see our projections for the final poll of 2016…
The annual ritual of bowl games is now in the books, and ///Alabama/Clemson/// has emerged as the national champion. They emerged from a three-month slog to win the ///SEC/ACC/// and claim the third College Football Playoff from a 128-team (or at least 65-team) field of hopefuls. The ///Crimson Tide/Tigers/// will undoubtedly top the final AP Top 25 of the season. But where will the rest of the teams rank in the hierarchy?
There were some spectacular bowl performances, with some teams shining and others fading in the final games of the season. The final polls of the year always lead to some overrating and underrating of teams that carries into next year’s poll because of these postseason results.
We will also likely see teams from certain conferences get far more of the benefit of the doubt. The ACC as a whole crushed the postseason among Power Five conferences. The Big 12 acquitted itself well. The Big Ten, on the other hand, fell flat on its face after entering the postseason as the hottest conference in the country.
And among the Group of Five leagues, the AAC had a rough go as Western Michigan fell in the Cotton Bowl and only South Florida and Tulsa won out of seven teams. The Sun Belt surprisingly finished with the best winning percentage, while C-USA and MWC schools also won four games apiece. None came close to achieving the dubious flop of the MAC, which was the only FBS conference to see every one of its bowl participants lose.
All of these things are sure to affect the way final ballots look in the AP Top 25. Our final projections of the 2016-2017 season are based around which teams we believe might receive a bump due to its performance as well as its conference affiliation, the stage on which it got to perform, and how pollsters want to set themselves up for next year. Click ahead to see how we project tomorrow’s poll will look now that the season has come to its conclusion.