The 2020 college football season looks a lot different with conferences like the Big Ten and the Pac-12 putting off playing at all in 2020, but the Associated Press still intends to rank teams as long as there are games played.
Kickoff is now under a month away, and the preseason AP Top 25 is set to be released on Aug. 24. The preseason All-America team will be released the next day.
So, what does that look like this year, in the midst of unprecedented circumstances surrounding the coronavirus pandemic?
All Division I teams will be considered when ballots are filled out, so this includes programs that aren’t playing this fall.
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When the season begins, voters will only rank the programs in play.
“The preseason poll has always been a speculative ranking of teams based on last year’s results and knowledge about the new makeup of teams,” Michael Giarrusso, the AP’s global sports editor, said in a report from The Advocate. “This year, we think it is crucial to give all the teams and all their fans a snapshot look at what the Top 25 would have been to open the season.”
The AP has also made clear is intends to rank teams that play in the spring instead — if we do eventually see a spring football season in 2021.
It will be interesting to see how things continue to shake out across the college football landscape considering how rapidly changing the situation has been thus far.
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