College football rankings and research

This is the version with data through games of Oct. 24, 2026. Figures that include the current season have changed since. Read the current version

The AP Poll's Worst Stretch in 40 Years, and What It Means for the CFP

We checked 2,787 ranked matchups since 1936. The AP is in its worst three-year stretch in 40 years, and the playoff committee's top 12 still matches it almost team for team.

By ZacUpdated Oct. 29, 2026Includes every game through Sat., Oct. 24, 2026

Key Findings

The committee says other polls don't matter

The College Football Playoff committee releases its first rankings on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Its final ranking, on Selection Sunday, Dec. 6, sets the whole bracket. It fills the at-large spots, seeds all 12 teams, gives the top four first-round byes and decides who hosts first-round games.

The playoff is reportedly nearing a deal to grow to 24 teams in 2027. This year it's still 12, and the committee's ranking decides who gets the open spots.

A year ago, on the day of its first rankings, then-chair Mack Rhoades read a statement on how the committee works. "No other organizations' polls matter to us," he said. Then the rankings come out, and they look a lot like the AP poll.

The AP poll is a weekly ranking by about 70 sportswriters and broadcasters. It has no official role in picking the playoff. AP asked the old BCS to stop using its poll after the 2004 season, and the committee's own rules don't use any poll.

93% of the committee's first top 12 teams were already in the AP's

Since 2014, 93% of the teams in the committee's first top 12 were already in the AP top 12 released two days earlier. Last year, the lists differed by one team: Texas for the committee, Virginia for the AP. In 2024, they matched all 12.

By Selection Sunday, the match reaches 97%. In 12 seasons, the final lists have differed by just five teams, and four of those were the committee's No. 12.

That doesn't mean the committee checks the AP. Rankings built on the same games tend to agree. But lately, the AP's higher-ranked teams have been losing.

The AP poll isn't built to predict games. AP asks its voters to rank teams on performance, not reputation. But when a poll ranks the better team higher, that team should usually win. Lately it hasn't, and the committee's rankings, which set the playoff field and seeds, look almost the same.

Since 2024, the AP's higher-ranked team has won 51%, down from 63%

We checked every regular-season game between two AP-ranked teams since the poll began in 1936. Over the 40 seasons from 1984 through 2023, the higher-ranked team won 63% of them.

Since 2024, it has won 51%, about the odds of a coin flip. That's the AP's worst three-year stretch in 40 years. The last time it was this low was 1984-86, when the poll ranked 20 teams.

All three seasons came in low: 53% in 2024, 51% in 2025 and 46% so far this year.

Since 2024, the AP's higher-ranked team has done worse in every part of the season. The biggest drop comes in August and September, from 62% to 41%.

This season, the lower-ranked team leads 13 to 11. No. 1 Ohio State lost at No. 4 Texas, 24-23. No. 2 Notre Dame lost at No. 8 BYU, 28-24. No. 4 Ole Miss lost at No. 21 Florida, 52-28.

Since 2024, the higher-ranked team's 56 losses in these games are spread across 29 teams.

Ranked teams still beat unranked teams 84% of the time

Did college football just get more random? Not across the board. Ranked teams beat unranked teams 83% of the time over the 40 seasons before 2024 and 84% since. The drop is in games between two ranked teams.

Where games were played explains only a little. Since 2024, the higher-ranked team has played 54% of these games on the road, up from 44% over the 40 seasons before. That shift would account for at most about 2 points of its 12-point drop.

And the AP isn't alone. Before each season's first committee ranking, the Coaches poll and the r/CFB fan poll fell by about as much. Each week, you can compare the AP poll with fans' rankings.

What changed in college football since 2024

College football changed fast while the AP poll slumped.

We didn't test whether any of these changes caused the drop. This report shows when it happened, not why. The transfer count is ours, from CollegeFootballData.com's portal records, and part of its rise reflects fuller records.

In the playoff, the committee's rankings went 11 for 22

The 12-team playoff began in 2024. In its 22 games, the committee's higher-ranked team has won 11. The AP's has won 12. The lists split on one game, the 2024 season's Orange Bowl semifinal, played Jan. 9, 2025, where the AP's pick, Notre Dame, beat Penn State.

Look at the last two title runs. In the 2024 season, the committee's No. 6, Ohio State, beat three higher-ranked teams to win the title. In the 2025 season, its No. 10, Miami, beat three higher-ranked teams to reach the title game. These ranks come from the rankings released on Selection Sunday, not playoff seeds.

The oddsmakers' pick has won 67% since 2024

Sportsbooks post opening lines each week, usually on Sunday, the same day the AP poll comes out. The oddsmakers' pick is the team favored when those lines open. Since 2024, it has won 67% of games between two ranked teams, compared with 51% for the AP's higher-ranked team.

The oddsmakers' pick beat the AP's in every season.

This year they disagreed nine times. The oddsmakers were right in eight, and in eight of the nine they picked the home team.

It's not a like-for-like test. A betting line prices one game, home field included. A poll ranks teams. But it shows these games could be called.

What to Watch Tuesday, Nov. 3

Put the committee's top 12 next to Sunday's AP top 12. Our prediction is that at least 11 of the 12 will match. That has happened in 11 of 12 seasons since 2014, and the one exception, 2020, still had 10. If it holds, the committee's list will again match a poll whose higher-ranked team has won about half its ranked games since 2024.

Also watch who lands at No. 12, whether two-loss SEC teams like Alabama, LSU and Ole Miss rank ahead of one-loss teams from other conferences, and whether Boise State ranks highest among the teams chasing the one automatic bid for conferences outside the Power Four.

Questions and Answers

Doesn't the Coaches poll match the committee too?

Yes, almost as closely as the AP's did. We measure the AP because its record goes back to 1936. The Coaches poll slumped too. In games before each season's first committee ranking, its higher-ranked team won 63% before 2024 and 49% since. Our Coaches poll records start in 2014.

Does the slump carry into November?

Yes, but it's smaller. Since 2024, the AP's higher-ranked team has won 54% of November games, down from 61% over the 40 seasons before. That's only 26 games, and December has just nine. In the playoff, the committee's higher-ranked team has won just 11 of 22.

Is the AP poll supposed to predict games?

Not directly. AP urges its voters "to base their votes on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation." Its guidance doesn't mention predicting games. But if a poll ranks the better team higher, that team should win more often than not. We count how often it does.

Isn't this just one bad season?

No. The finding is the three-season number, 51%. Last season was at 40% through the same week (10 of 25), and it finished at 51%.

Could it be chance?

Probably not. Depending on the test, a drop this big would happen by chance less than 1 to about 7 times in 100. The 51% has a margin of error of about 9 points.

Could the rest of this season change the 40-year finding?

Only with a historic finish. To finish above the next lowest stretch, 1993-95 at 56%, the higher-ranked team would need to win roughly 85% to 90% of this season's remaining matchups. No full season since 1989 has been that high.

For reporters: Methodology · Data Checks · How to Cite · Data Requests · Earlier versions

Methodology

We counted every regular-season game between two teams in the AP poll, including conference title games. The count runs from the poll's first season in 1936 through Oct. 24, 2026. That is 2,787 games, 1,661 of them since the poll went to 25 teams in 1989. Rankings come from the College Poll Archive through 2012 and ESPN since 2013. Results come from James Howell's scores archive and ESPN. Every winner and score matches a second database, CollegeFootballData.com. Second copies of the AP polls give the same season totals for every season except 2005. They are CollegeFootballData.com's for 1936-1988, Wikipedia's tables for 1989-2004, ESPN's for 2005-12 and the College Poll Archive's since 2013. The 22 games of the 12-team playoff, 2024 and 2025 seasons, are counted on their own, and committee rankings are compared with the AP poll from 2014 on. Each team's losses before kickoff come from CollegeFootballData.com's game records. Regular-season figures include conference title games; playoff games count only in the playoff figures, and other bowl games are not counted. Playoff ranks are each list's Selection Sunday ranking, not playoff seeds. In all, the report draws on 11,433 distinct games from the 1936 through 2026 seasons: 2,787 regular-season games between two ranked teams since 1936, 8,624 between a ranked and an unranked team since 1984, and 22 playoff games. Ranked-versus-unranked games from 1989 on come from CollegeFootballData.com's game records with AP ranks at kickoff, plus the conference title games it files with postseason games. For 1984-88 they come from its season game files matched to the College Poll Archive poll in force, which keeps games against Division I-AA (now FCS) opponents; the same method reproduces the 1989 and 1990 counts exactly.

Data Checks
  • Through 1967, except in 1965, the AP's final poll came out before the bowls. It counts as the poll in force for games played after its release, which covers six games in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
  • Every 2013-2026 game figure was recounted from the raw game, poll, fan-poll and betting-line files with separately written code before publication. A second, separately written check reproduced the counts.
  • Every game result in this report matches CollegeFootballData.com's game records: the same winner and the same final score in all 2,787 games since 1936. We also checked the other way, with the same polls. Its records hold no game between two ranked teams that this count leaves out. The only exceptions are tied games and games between teams tied in the poll, which the method excludes. Like ours, its records are incomplete for some World War II service teams.
  • For 1989-2004, each of the 255 weekly AP polls used here was checked against a second copy of the polls, Wikipedia's season ranking tables. Of 6,379 poll entries, 16 differed, mostly in the order of tied teams, and none changed a season total.
  • CollegeFootballData.com also keeps its own copy of the weekly AP polls. For 1936-1988, its polls agree with ours on all 11,260 poll entries, apart from the spelling of a few team names. So every season total is the same. From 1989 on, we recounted using its games and polls in place of ours. That gives the same season totals for 1989, 1991 and 2002 and for every season from 2006 on. The 1990 season also matches once a one-week labeling offset in its 1990 polls is corrected. For 1992-2005 its older weekly polls have gaps, and its totals differ by one to three games a season. No season moves to the other side of 50%. It also has 2024-26 as the lowest three-season stretch since 1989.
  • The 1936-2012 build (College Poll Archive polls and Howell's scores; ESPN for 2005-12) reproduces this report's 2014, 2019 and 2024 counts exactly. For 2001-04 it was also compared with ESPN's records; two ESPN poll files, for 2001 and 2003, contained errors, and the archive's polls were used.
  • Game sites before 2013 come from Howell's database. For the 596 games from 2013 to 2025, its home, road and neutral labels match ESPN's in 583 (98%). Most differences are conference title games played on a campus.
  • From 1989 to 1995, 11 games between two ranked teams ended in ties. Counting them as games the higher-ranked team did not win would not move any season to the other side of 50%.
  • The oddsmakers' pick, or opening betting favorite, comes from the opening lines sportsbooks post at the start of game week, usually on Sunday. They are mainly from U.S.-licensed books (DraftKings, FanDuel, Circa), with six 2024 openers from Bovada, an offshore book, via CollegeFootballData.com. A separate database, CollegeFootballData.com's record of Bovada's opening lines, names the same favorite in 107 of the 108 games since 2024 where it is not our own source. Using its favorite in all 114 games gives 66% (75 of 114) rather than 67% (76 of 114). ESPN's stored "opening" line was not used, because for some games it was a look-ahead number posted months earlier. Eight of the 114 lines come from published tables that do not name the book.
  • The committee overlap counts come from CollegeFootballData.com's committee rankings and AP polls. ESPN's records give the same count for every season's first and final ranking that both hold.
  • An audit of the 2005-12 ESPN files found three 2012 conference title games listed twice and one 2005 game involving an unranked team. They are removed: 2005 counts 43 games and 2012 counts 46.
Full Methodology

Games. We count every regular-season game between two teams in the AP Top 25 at kickoff, including conference title games, at any site. This covers 1989 through games of Oct. 24, 2026 (1,661 games). The headline comparison uses the 40 seasons from 1984 through 2023, when the higher-ranked team won 1,072 of 1,702 (63%). The AP ranked 20 teams from 1968 through 1988. The 25-team era, 1989-2023, gives 64% (983 of 1,547). Season totals back to 1936 count games between two teams in that season's AP poll. Before 1989 the poll ranked 20 teams in most seasons and 10 in 1961-67. Bowl and playoff games are excluded. The Covid-shortened 2020 season is included; its conference title games, played Dec. 18-19, count as regular-season games. Tied games, possible before 1996, are excluded.

Ranks. A team's rank is its rank in the AP poll in force on game day. That is the most recent poll released before the game, or the preseason poll for early games. The higher-ranked team is the one with the better number; games between teams tied in the poll are not counted. Coaches poll ranks come from ESPN and fan-poll ranks from the r/CFB poll archive. Unranked opponents include FCS teams.

Sources by period. 2013-2026: ESPN scoreboard and AP poll records. 2005-12: ESPN game records with weekly AP polls from the College Poll Archive. 1936-2004: weekly AP polls from the College Poll Archive matched to results from James Howell's historical scores database. All periods are counted game by game, and the game file lists every game. Game sites (home, road or neutral) come from ESPN for 2013-2026 and from Howell's database before 2013. Committee comparisons start in 2014, the committee's first season. So does the Coaches poll comparison, since it counts games before each season's first committee ranking.

Betting lines. Every betting figure uses the opening line; kickoff and closing lines are not used. The oddsmakers' pick, or opening betting favorite, is the favorite in the opening line that sportsbooks post at the start of game week, usually on Sunday. The books are mainly U.S.-licensed (DraftKings, FanDuel and Circa Sports), plus Bovada, an offshore book, for six 2024 games. Most 2024-25 openers (83 of 90) come from SportsBettingDime's published opening-line tables. One, the Iowa State-Kansas State game in Dublin, comes from VSiN. None of these opening lines was a pick'em. In 2024, FanDuel supplied 20 of the 43 openers, and 7 came from tables listing FanDuel and ESPN Bet without saying which. Bovada supplied 6 (conference title games and Notre Dame-Navy) and DraftKings 3, and 7 came from tables that name no book. In 2025, DraftKings supplied 46 of 47. The Dublin game comes from a published opener that names no book. In 2026, DraftKings supplied 23 of 24, and Circa Sports supplied Ohio State at Texas. For the six Bovada games, the opener comes from CollegeFootballData.com's record of Bovada's lines, and a second source confirms the favorite in each. In two of them, the ACC and Big 12 title games, BetMGM's first number came out hours earlier and favored the other team. The wider market opened soon after with SMU and Arizona State favored, and we use that line. Six Week 1 games had no game-week opener because their lines were posted months earlier; every source agrees on the favorite in those games. For every other game, Bovada's opening lines in CollegeFootballData.com's data are the cross-check. Per-game sources are listed in the dataset, available on request.

Committee. The committee released 72 rankings from 2014 through 2025. The average of 11.4 shared teams compares 71 of them, from ESPN's records, with the AP poll released the same week. The 2020 final ranking is left out of that average because ESPN's records do not include the AP's Dec. 20, 2020 poll. Adding it, with the College Poll Archive's copy of that poll, leaves the average at 11.4. CollegeFootballData.com's regular-season records hold 70 of the 72 rankings and also give 11.4. They are missing Nov. 26, 2019, and the Dec. 20, 2020 final, which it files with its postseason rankings. The first-ranking and Selection Sunday counts use each season's first and final committee ranking and the AP poll of the same week from CollegeFootballData.com. The AP poll comes out on Sunday and the first committee ranking on Tuesday, so the AP poll is two days older; the final ranking and the AP poll come out the same day. For the 2020 final, we use ESPN's committee ranking and the College Poll Archive's AP poll. The Coaches poll comparison uses CollegeFootballData.com's Coaches poll for the week of each first ranking. "Before the committee's first ranking" means games played before that season's first ranking, 2014-26.

Playoff. The playoff figures count all 22 games of the 12-team playoff, the 2024 and 2025 seasons, from CollegeFootballData.com's game records. Each team's rank is its place in each list's last ranking before the playoff: the committee's final ranking and the AP poll released the same day. These are rankings, not playoff seeds.

Transfers. Incoming transfers per FBS team count every CollegeFootballData.com transfer portal record for a season whose destination is an FBS school that season. Each season counts the portal records CollegeFootballData.com files under it. For the 2024 season, all but 2 of its 3,378 records are dated August 2023 to July 2024, and nearly every record in every season falls in that August-to-July window. The count is divided by the number of FBS teams. That gives 6.3 for the 2021 season (816 transfers, 130 teams) and 10.7 for the 2023 season (1,418 transfers, 133 teams). It gives 15.4 for the 2024 season (2,066 transfers, 134 teams) and 22.4 for the 2026 season (3,092 transfers, 138 teams). Records without a destination are not counted.

Earlier research. Fair and Oster (2007) found that the closing Las Vegas point spread already held all the useful information in college football computer ranking systems. We did not find an earlier published measurement of this win rate across the AP poll's history, in searches through October 2026.

Tests. Two-sided Fisher's exact tests, which assume games are independent. Games share teams and weeks, so these p-values are likely too small. We also treated whole seasons as the unit. Only 0.3% of the ways to pick 3 of the 38 seasons since 1989 produce a gap as large as 2024-26's (one-sided). Checks that resample teams, comparing 1984-2023 with 2024-26, give p-values of about 0.005 to 0.07. Margins of error are 95% Wilson intervals, which also treat games as independent. The first-ranking cutoff was chosen after reviewing the data, and p-values are not adjusted for the number of comparisons. How the figures were verified is described under Data checks.

Counts behind the percentages.

  • Committee and AP top 12s, 2014-2025: first ranking, 134 of 144 teams shared (93%); Selection Sunday, 139 of 144 (97%).
  • AP's higher-ranked team, games between two ranked teams: 1984-2023, 1,072 of 1,702 (63%); since 2024, 58 of 114 (51%).
  • By season: 2024, 23 of 43 (53%); 2025, 24 of 47 (51%); 2026 through Week 8 (Oct. 24), 11 of 24 (46%). Last season at the same point, through Week 8 (Oct. 18, 2025): 10 of 25 (40%).
  • By month, 1984-2023 then since 2024: August and September, 281 of 453 (62%) then 17 of 41 (41%); November, 335 of 552 (61%) then 14 of 26 (54%).
  • Ranked teams against unranked teams: 1984-2023, 6,669 of 8,042 (83%); since 2024, 487 of 582 (84%).
  • Higher-ranked team on the road: 1984-2023, 755 of 1,702 games (44%); since 2024, 61 of 114 (54%).
  • Oddsmakers' pick: since 2024, 76 of 114 (67%); 2024, 28 of 43 (65%); 2025, 30 of 47 (64%); 2026, 18 of 24 (75%).
  • Playoff, higher-ranked team: committee's, 11 of 22 (50%); AP's, 12 of 22 (55%).
  • Coaches poll, before each season's first committee ranking (records start in 2014): before 2024, 164 of 261 (63%); since 2024, 41 of 84 (49%).
  • Next lowest three seasons, 1993-95: 80 of 142 (56%). To finish above it, the higher-ranked team needs 17 of the remaining 19 matchups if 2026 has 43 (89%), 19 of 21 if it has 45 (90%), or 20 of 23 if it has 47 (87%).
Limitations
  • Why the change happened. The report does not test transfers, NIL, conference realignment or the playoff format.
  • Whether any voter ranked teams incorrectly. It measures outcomes of the combined poll, not individual voters' rankings.
  • The committee's accuracy over a season. Outside the playoff, committee rankings are compared with the AP poll only for overlap, and the 22 playoff games are too few to rank one list above another.
  • Exact certainty. The standard tests treat games as independent. Allowing for teams that appear in many games, the comparison with 1984-2023 gives p-values of about 0.005 to 0.07.
  • Whether betting lines were well calibrated. It counts straight-up winners, not results against the spread.
  • A full 2026 season. This season's figures run through games of Oct. 24 and will change.
Sources
How to Cite
Zac. "The AP Poll's Worst Stretch in 40 Years, and What It Means for the CFP." RankCFB, Oct. 29, 2026. Data through games of Oct. 24, 2026.

Cite the update date, since 2026 figures change weekly. Free to cite with credit to RankCFB and a link to this page. Charts may be republished with the same credit.

Data Requests

The full game-by-game dataset (1936-2026) is available on request. Email press@rankcfb.com.

About RankCFB

RankCFB is an independent college football research and review platform. Each week, fans rank their own Top 25 and see how it compares with the AP poll and with other fans. RankCFB pulls historical data from college football's polls, game results and betting lines, and its research tests the sport's rankings against nearly 2,800 games between ranked teams since 1936. It publishes its methods on the site, along with new reports, and shares its full data on request.

RankCFB was started by Zac. Read the story on our About page.

RankCFB has no financial ties to sportsbooks, the Associated Press or the College Football Playoff.

Media contact: press@rankcfb.com

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