College football released its official preseason 2017 AP Top 25 rankings on Monday and they weren’t shocking anyone.
The 2017 college football season is right around the corner and there are plenty of things to look forward to. Not only is it the first taste of football since January for college fans, but it’s also a time to talk about the contenders, and pretenders, for the 2017 season.
It all starts with the release of the preseason AP Top 25 poll, which happened on Monday afternoon. The official release was anticipated, but brought few, if any, surprises.
Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself: Preseason AP Top 25.
Sitting there at the top is, to no one’s surprise, Alabama. The Crimson Tide are coming off a forgetful finish to their 2016 season, losing in the national title game to Clemson. The reigning national champion Tigers are still in the top five despite losing key players, such as Deshaun Watson. In fact, they sit at No. 5.
The rest of the top five is basically what everyone and their brother was expecting. Ohio State is No. 2 and is a favorite to win the Big Ten, Florida State is No. 3 with the second-most first-place votes and USC is fourth. The Seminoles and Trojans are favored to win their conferences as well.
The rest of the top 10 has annual contenders such as Penn State, Oklahoma, Washington, Wisconsin and Oklahoma State. All of those programs are poised to make a run at the playoff in 2017.
Next: College Football: Top 50 breakout candidates for 2017
Truly, the only surprises for me were Oklahoma State being ranked lower than Oklahoma, Michigan not being top 10, Texas being ranked and also Tennessee cracking the top 25. Other than that, surprises were minimal.