First AP Poll from 1936 filled with unexpected football programs

The 1936 AP college football preseason top 25 featured Notre Dame and USC, but also Yale, St. Mary’s, Holy Cross, and Marquette.

The 2024 college football preseason AP poll was released on Monday, giving fans an early look at the projected top teams in the country with the season getting underway in about two weeks.

This is a tradition dating back to 1936, when the first AP poll was released ahead of the first week of the season, ranking the top 20 teams in the nation.

Some of the names on the inaugural list from 1936 look pretty familiar: USC, Notre Dame, and Washington all come in next to each other at six, seven, and eight, while LSU (13) Texas A&M (14) Nebraska (15) and SMU (19) remain candidates to show up in the polls year in and year out.

However, it’s the other names on the list that make this a fun exercise:

Minnesota, Duke, Army, Northwestern, and Purdue is a wild, wild top five. At least all five of those programs still play football, however, which cannot be said for No. 12 St. Mary’s or No. 20 Marquette. Likewise, while Yale (10) Duquesne (11), Fordham (16), and Holy Cross (17) all still have football, each program competes at the FCS level.

As amusing as this list looks now, it apparently was a pretty good predictor in 1936, at least at the top, as the Golden Gophers did in fact win the national title that season.