Final AP Top 25 rankings released following national championship game
The final AP Top 25 rankings were released early Tuesday morning following Georgia’s 65-7 beatdown over TCU in the College Football Playoff national championship game.
Stetson Bennett combined for 6 touchdowns, while Georgia’s defense suffocated TCU’s offense and Max Duggan.
Georgia started the season ranked No. 3 in the AP Top 25 Poll — behind 1. Alabama and 2. Ohio State. TCU started the season unranked.
Final AP Top 25 rankings
1. Georgia Bulldogs
2. TCU Horned Frogs
3. Michigan Wolverines
4. Ohio State Buckeyes
5. Alabama Crimson Tide
6. Tennessee Volunteers
7. Penn State Nittany Lions
8. Washington Huskies
9. Tulane Green Wave
10. Utah Utes
11. Florida State Seminoles
12. USC Trojans
13. Clemson Tigers
14. Kansas State Wildcats
15. Oregon Ducks
16. LSU Tigers
17. Oregon State Beavers
18. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
19. Troy Trojans
20. Mississippi State Bulldogs
21. UCLA Bruins
22. Pittsburgh Panthers
23. South Carolina Gamecocks
24. Fresno State Bulldogs
25. Texas Longhorns
Others receiving votes:
Duke 49, UTSA 45, Air Force 40, Boise State 38, Minnesota 35, Texas Tech 19, North Carolina 8, North Carolina State 6, Iowa 4, Louisville 3, Purdue 3, Maryland 2, Marshall 2, Cincinnati 1, Illinois 1
Imagine beating Bama, beating an actual conference champion Clemson, losing only by 14 to UGA national champions 2nd year row now in Athens, and your ranked exactly where you were going into the Clemson game?
Imo:
1. UGA
2. OSU
3. Tennessee(TN beat 4 currently ranked teams, 1 in the top 5, another in the top 15)
4. Alabama
5. Michigan
TCU at #2? So you only drop one spot after losing by 58? Bama sorry, you lost the head to head and you lost weeks after TN to LSU. Bama does not even have a OC. Bottom line is if your a team that was in the playoffs and you have two losses, you will never be dropped out of the top 5 no matter what. Bama privy lives on as well. Clemson is also the most punished team in this ranking for a 2 loss team, especially for a team that won their conference.
USCe curb-stomped and thoroughly embarrassed your Vols, which you conveniently leave out of all your rationalizations. Take your #6 and be happy Kirby called the Dawgs off when the rain came. No one outside of Tennessee cares where you’re ranked. You’ve won exactly zip for the umpteenth straight year – maybe moderate your zealotry to reflect that.
Nah, he is right. If you are going to judge a team based on a single game instead of an entire season, then for UGA that game should be needing a 4th quarter comeback to beat 6-7 Missouri.
Tennessee beat ACC champs Clemson, #5 Alabama and SEC West champs LSU. Alabama by contrast beat Kansas State, the 2nd best team in the Big 12. They lost to Tennessee head to head and they lost to a team that the Vols beat in LSU. The Vols beatdown of LSU was more impressive than UGA’s. That game took place in Baton Rouge plus the LSU QB was actually healthy in that game, not hobbling around on one foot when UGA got him.
And Kirby Smart didn’t call off the Dogs. UGA actually didn’t have much going on in that game on offense. UGA’s defense dominated the Tennessee’s offense. But that was one of the MANY games where UGA’s offense was “meh” during the regular season. UGA fans want to pretend as if the offense that we saw against Oregon, South Carolina, LSU, Ohio State and TCU was the same one all season. Were that the case, SB IV wins the Heisman going away. In reality, there were 4 games this season where Bennett didn’t have a TD pass, and a 5th where he only had 1. Take away the scores set up by the UGA defense and that 27-13 tally is a lot closer.
Well if you want to judge a team based on a game they won, so be it.
Tenn sucks, but that’s why their so proud of their pretty good season.
“Tennessee beat Alabama head-to-head” All I know if I was a Vol fan and got my ass kind caked 15 years in a row and to “win” in that manner, I’d be beyond let down. Bama should have won that game. Kool-Aids interception was ball game. TCU at #2 is a bad joke. It should have been the 4 best teams- UGA, Bama, Michigan and Ohio State.
He is right though, for the first time. Can’t judge a team off of one game when there’s a whole season to judge.
Actually, under the current discussed format, the 4 highest ranked conference champs would get a 1st round bye. So this year, for example, both Clemson (who got beat up by SCar) and Utah (who the Gators beat) would get byes… I hope this is not how it shakes down, but that is what has been discussed as how it would go down.
gwhite…Bo cry a river full of tears. The Season is Over/Finished/Done and it’s not coming back, so your
“Vol-Style-Reasoning” will never ever change all teams records.
Go cry…
shouldn’t have fallen apart against a South Carolina team that could only score 6 points on a fake punt against a bad gator team the week before.
Te writers at the Associated Press likely frown upon losing games on purpose though.
15-0
27-13
1998
grown man
The simple answer is because a quick whistle on a turnover that would have ended the game followed by a very late flag on an interception that also would have ended the game is the only reason Tennessee gets to claim victory over Alabama. The entire college world know it. Tennessee had a great year. The real issue with these rankings is TCU at number two, that is NOT the second best team in the country.
The Dawgs beat 7 teams ranked in the top 25.
Yep, amazing.
Some context: 3 of the 7 were conference title game plus playoff, which means that any title team would play the same. 2 more were 5 loss Mississippi State and South Carolina teams.
That makes Oregon and Tennessee the only impressive “regular” wins for UGA. And Oregon was at best the #4 team in the Pac-12 this season after Utah, USC and Washington. And a strong case can be made that they are also #5 behind … the Oregon State team that beat them head to had and has the same record.
Now I give UGA all the credit in the world for going undefeated and winning back-to-back national titles. But the road to winning the first title, which involved playing Alabama twice as well as a Michigan team that actually was better than the TCU team that UGA just played and that was just the postseason – was way tougher than the second, where a rebuilding Tennessee and an injury-riddled Ohio State actually were the best teams that UGA played this year.
Hey…we only lost 4..c’mon now
you go on about tennessee being an impressive win yet also talk about a 5 loss South Carolina team. yet that “impressive” team lost 38-63 against that bad south carolina team. Can’t have it both ways. lol
Well, it is a “final” ranking and not a “season” ranking. Presumably it is a ranking of the teams and their comparative ability to each other here at seasons end. IMHO, TCU shouldn’t be at 2. That was a massacre last night No fluke. A total beat down. If a boxing match, they would have called it early. Did TCU deserve to be in CFP? Certainly. Are they 2nd best team in the country? Nope. I am not an Ohio fan, but based on CFP results alone, I’d at least have them above TCU. Played same GA team much more competitively, a week or so ago. Michigan lost to this same TCU squad but did beat Ohio. Seems like AP felt they had to keep the 4 playoff teams 1 through 4. This all goes to show we really do not need a 12 team playoff. Heck, most years it’s debatable there are 4 deserving teams. $ talks, I get it, and a lot of teams that flirt with top 10 – 15 rankings are thrilled, but get ready for a lot of first round blow-outs like last night… but this is what the networks want… so this is what we will get – Playoff games people will turn off at half-time.
The 1st round games might be fairly competitive. Not a lot of difference in the #5 thru #12 teams. #7 vs #10, #8 vs #9. Might be some good games.
Using the final CFP poll, UGA would have played the Utah/Kansas State winner then likely OSU or Bama in round two.
TCU would have played the winner of Tennessee/Pedophile State and have been quickly dispatched.
Good point. So the second round games may have more of a tendency to be one-sided. Maybe that’s why they considering a format (which I don’t like) of the top rated conf champs getting byes round one… as this year you’d have had Clemson (trounced by Tenn) getting a first round bye simply because they would have been rewarded for playing in a weak conference! Way to try and level the playing field ESPN/CFP.
Btw you have to win a conf. championship AND be in the top 4 to earn a bye.
I certainly don’t think that TCU is the second best team in the country, but it really doesn’t matter at this point. UGA is the clear champ. Everyone else can just line up wherever after that. I’m happy LSU is at 16 and I’m looking forward to better things next season. No one cares who is third or sixth, and two years from now, virtually no one will even remember.
True. Will be interesting to see how the Coaches Poll compares… if they even do an end of the season poll.
They do. It’s the playoff committee that doesn’t.
I know a lot of people think they saw TCUs best game but they didn’t. In sports like football you just don’t see everything every game. And KState would have soundly beaten Ohio State or Michigan. Both those big 10 teams looked better than they were to the same degree that TCU looked worse than they were. Complete crime that we didn’t get to see Deuce Vaughn and KState in the playoffs
This is wrong, it should be in relation to how close they came to beating GA:
1) Georga
2) Ohio State
3) Mizzou
4) Kentucky
5) Tennessee
There’s your final Top 5 folks.
LOL… that’s a good laugh.
smh
Booches…a typical Mizzou fan. His “Reasoning” is like gwhite’s.
AFan…a typical Bama fan. Tripping over sarcasm yet again.
Tennessee should be lower. Maybe in the “others receiving votes” section
Good luck with 8-4 next season
8-4? Have you seen the GA schedule next season? Lmao, they’ll be undefeated, again.
Forgot to mention…
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This just shows how ridiculous the media is. To rank a team number 2 that just got blown out by 52 points, and was able to just score one touchdown, is the height of “no one is responsible for what they have done”.
The media has to protect the marketability of their national product. That means the final four remained the final four that went into the CFP, with no effect considered from who they beat, lost to, how they played, or how other meaningful bowl games played out.
A reasonable argument can be made for a Top 6 that looks more like this:
1. UGA (15-0, beat all comers)
2. UT (11-2, beat Alabama, LSU and Clemson, lost to UGA and stayed home sleeping on that late trip to SC)
3. Alabama (11-2, lost close to UT and to LSU, curb stomped KS, which means they would’ve curb stomped TCU too!)
4. TCU (13-2, beat KS then lost to KS, beat Michigan in the CFP then got curb stomped by UGA in the CFP)
5. Michigan (13-1, beat THE OSU who scared the heck out of UGA, but not good enough to beat TCU, which is not good enough to beat all 3 big boys in the SEC)
6. THE OSU (11-2, lost at home to Michigan badly, then scared the heck out of UGA in the CFP before losing. Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades)