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According to the Coaches Poll top 25 rankings, how did all the preseason rankings stack up since the poll came out before the 1978 season?
Which college football programs got the most love and respect over the years in the preseason Coaches Poll?
The AP Poll started in 1936, but it didn’t start putting out a preseason ranking until 1950 – we’ll do the all-time preseason AP Top 25 rankings next.
1950 also just happened to be the same year the Coaches Poll started up under the UPI (United Press International) before USA TODAY took over in 1991. However, there wasn’t a preseason coaches poll until the 1978 season.
It might seem somewhat trivial now in a College Football Playoff era, but the preseason rankings used to be everything in the national championship chase.
For the most part – back in the poll-and-bowl era – if you were ranked in the preseason top five or so and kept on winning, that was it. You were locked in. It was a brutally flawed system – as opposed to current one that’s just painfully flawed – in lieu of any playoff format to determine a champion.
Most of college football’s national champions were based on nothing more than a belief of an ill-informed voting base that didn’t have access to more than a few games a week. Even worse, the bowl games weren’t taken into account in the national championship voting until 1968 for the AP and 1974 for the Coaches Poll.
So the point here is to see where the expectations were set. Over the years – at least since 1978 – how did the coaches (or the athletic department staffers who did it for them) – perceive the top teams before the seasons?
USA TODAY Coaches Poll, All-Time Final Rankings
Greatest Programs of All-Time | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s
1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s | AP Top Programs of All-Time
USA TODAY Preseason Coaches Polls
1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
Coaches Poll: Preseason College Football Top 25 Rankings 1978 to 2021
CFN devised a scoring system giving every UPI/USA TODAY-ranked preseason No. 1 team 25 points, the No. 2 team 24, No. 3 23, and so on down to the bottom of the top 20 in the early years, and then it became the top 25 later on.
1 Oklahoma 742
2 Ohio State 722
3 Florida State 683
4 Michigan 647
5 Alabama 639
6 Nebraska 588
7 USC 539
8 Notre Dame 521
9 Penn State 519
10 Texas 518
11 Florida 516
12 Georgia 495
13 Miami 482
14 LSU 477
15 Auburn 410
16 Clemson 396
17 Washington 363
18 Tennessee 341
19 Texas A&M 312
20 UCLA 295
21 Wisconsin 249
22 Oregon 228
23 Virginia Tech 220
24 Iowa 189
25 Colorado 178
USA TODAY Preseason Coaches Polls
1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
26 Arkansas 176
27 Stanford 154
28 Pitt 149
29 Michigan State 145
30 North Carolina 137
31 West Virginia 130
32 Kansas State 119
T33 BYU 112
T33 TCU 112
35 Oklahoma State 103
36 Arizona State 96
37 South Carolina 92
38 Syracuse 86
39 Georgia Tech 83
40 Louisville 78
41 Boise State 77
42 Houston 68
T43 Arizona 66
T43 Purdue 66
45 Baylor 64
46 Cal 63
47 Maryland 60
48 Missouri 58
49 Ole Miss 57
50 Virginia 49
USA TODAY Coaches Poll, All-Time Final Rankings
Greatest Programs of All-Time | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s
1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s | AP Top Programs of All-Time
51 Illinois 48
52 SMU 34
53 Utah 33
54 Mississippi State 32
55 Iowa State 28
56 Northwestern 22
T57 Boston College 21
T57 Oregon State 21
59 Cincinnati 20
T60 NC State 17
T60 Texas Tech 17
T60 UCF 17
T60 Washington State 17
64 Kansas 15
65 Colorado State 13
66 Minnesota 11
T67 Rutgers 10
T67 USF 10
T69 Indiana 9
T69 Kentucky 9
71 Southern Miss 6
72 Marshall 5
T73 Louisiana 3
T73 Wake Forest 3
T75 Coastal Carolina 2
T75 Hawaii 2
77 Fresno State 1
USA TODAY Coaches Poll, All-Time Final Rankings
Greatest Programs of All-Time | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s
1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s | AP Top Programs of All-Time
USA TODAY Preseason Coaches Polls
1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
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