Understanding All-American Football Lists and Polls
Bobby, Steele Chambers, and Bill Bender discuss how preseason polls impact teams, the essentials of the All-American football list, and voter disparities.
Video Transcript
What are the five, the five entities that make up the consensus unanimous All-American list?
I know AP's one.
I know you guys are one.
Football Writers Association is one, correct?
Yeah, and then the UFCA and then, Walter Camp.
Okay.
And that those, so those five.
And then, you know, with the, like you said, the preseason polls, right?
Like, once the AP and coaches poll are out, it's, that's where we do most of the comparisons and the, you know, the, the arguing and those kind of things about who is overrated and overrat- I don't, I know, I feel like you guys, too.
I, I enjoy it.
I, I enjoy when the AP Poll comes out.
I was excited, 'cause it's like having some new information to download and, analyze and all that stuff.
How much difference, like, when you look at the difference between the coaches and the AP, like, do you sit there and try to go scour back and forth to see the little idiosyncrasies, who got left off?
Did this team get bumped up a little bit?
Did this team get bumped down?
There's lar- a large degree of congruency between them, but there are some little subtle differences.
Oh yeah.
You know, I, I think one of the things I looked at was, you know, the first place votes and who, who's getting most of these first place votes between the two.
One thing I did notice, Bobby, I, I added them up.
The first place votes between the coaches poll and the AP poll, and it, and it shoots out like this.
Ohio State had 78, Indiana 22, Oregon 20.
So that's 120 votes, right?
I had to make sure I got that right.
Notre Dame 11, Georgia seven, Texas two, Miami one.
So that means that the Big 10 had 120 first place votes across two polls between three schools, and the SEC had nine.
And as you guys know, not one first place vote in the AP poll.
So, I think that speaks a lot to Indiana, Ohio State, and Oregon, how the voters feel that all three of those schools are gonna have fantastic seasons in 2026.
Do you feel like there's some kind of conspiracy going, going on against the SEC?
Because I- Totally I don't have either of them winning my national championship, but I do feel like Georgia and Texas do deserve a little bit of love as far as possibly winning it or being ranked number one.
Do you, do you not agree a little bit?
Well, I mean, still, they, people vote on that that are in the SEC.
That's what struck me.
I, I think it's- Right less conspiracy and more, you know, these AP Poll voters in the South who know how good Georgia's going to be and how good Texas is going to be.
So I was a little surprised by that.
It, it is a big year for that conference.
If you were putting pressure on conferences, it's just, you know, you could say, "Oh, I, I can't believe they haven't been to the title game in three years," but this is a conference that expects to be, have a school in the title game every year, you know?
And, and they do have a ton of schools ranked.
I mean, they have that corridor of teams from, like, Ole Miss to Alabama in 8 to 13 that, definitely will be in the mix for playoff berths as well.
So I don't think the SEC's hurting that much, but still, that, that was more the surprise to me that- Mm-hmm when you have voters from the South in the AP poll and not one of them put, put a one next to Georgia or Texas- that was a little bit surprising.
Yeah, the first time, I believe, since 2015, Bill, that an AP team has not gotten a first place vote, and that was coming off that Ohio State championship run in '14 where they had almost everyone back.
And I was thinking, like, I, I don't know if Ohio State was, how many times have th- have there been unanimity or unanimous number one in the AP?
It doesn't happen often.
I, but I mean, you know, occasionally you'll get that with a, with a team.
I'm, I wonder what, I'd have to go back and look at what 2015 Ohio State had in terms of number one votes coming off a national championship and that loaded roster they had in '15.
I bet it was pretty close to unanimous.
I bet a, the Georgia '22 team may have been close to unanimous.
But you always have somebody vote for somebody else.
I think what, what struck me as well is how it's spread out.
Very similar to the coaches poll, where Indiana had eight first place votes, not as many as they had in the coaches poll, but they still have enough people voting for them and believing in them, and I'm one of those people, too.
I don't think they're going away.
I don't think they are six, should be ranked six or seven.
I, I look at it more like Ohio State, Indiana are one and two to me.
So as suspected, Bill, I went back and looked, and there's a pa- there's a webpage for everything.
Yes, there is.
College Poll Arch- Archive, pre-season poll, week one, 2015, September 8th, 2015.
Ohio State, 61 first place votes, which was the unanimous, making them the unanimous number one overall favorite.
And that being the last time the SEC did not get one.
'Cause I was trying to think, like, that was still right in the midst of that Alabama run.
So almost every year they were gonna at least get a couple, I'd always assume.
Yeah.
And, and I believe that year, what, Ohio State had the late season loss, didn't get in the playoff.
Yeah.
And then Alabama wins the national title against Clemson.
So it, it is, it's, they're fun to look at, right?
And, and they're fun to, you know, analyze and look at who, who we think is overrated or underrated.
You know, obviously when the Big 10 and the SEC have 17 of the 25 teams in the poll, that's 68%.
A- and then you look at group of six schools, I think there were three or four schools that, that had four votes or more.
Or four votes, at least four votes.
