College Football Rankings 2018: Final post-bowl AP Top 25 projections
By Zach Bigalke
Now that the season is in the books, where will the AP Poll put everyone in their final rankings? Here are the final Top 25 projections for the 2018 season.
More: Clemson Tigers stun Nick Saban, Alabama to win National Championship
With the conclusion of Alabama-Clemson IV at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the 2018 FBS season has officially come to a close a week into the new year. While the College Football Playoff selection committee won’t be releasing a final post-bowl edition of their Top 25 rankings, the major polls will be putting out their final hierarchies for the 2018 season.
That includes the AP Top 25, the oldest of the extant human polls that dates back to 1936. For more than eight decades, the Associated Press has polled its media members to determine the best teams in the country. And, since 1968, the AP has followed up its final regular-season rankings with an updated poll that reflects the results of the postseason.
No human ranking is ever going to be perfect, but the beauty of the poll system is that it aggregates a wide range of opinion from across the country. And since there are five times the number of participants as the College Football Playoff, the sample size allows for far greater normalization of the numbers .
With that poll due to come out in the ensuing hours, let’s look at where everyone will fall in the pecking order now that the dust has settled on more than three dozen bowl games across the country.