Clemson is the preseason No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 for the second straight season. The Tigers beat Ohio State, who are No. 2, in a thrilling College Football Playoff semifinal last season.
Alabama is No. 3, Southeastern Conference rival Georgia is No. 4 and defending Big 12 champion Oklahoma is No. 5. Defending national champion LSU is No. 6.
Notre Dame, who is playing in the ACC for the 2020 season, is No. 10 and North Carolina begins the year No. 18.
The 85th edition of the AP rankings will be like none before.
When the season starts - if the season starts - the Buckeyes and 53 other Bowl Subdivision teams will no longer be eligible for inclusion in the Top 25 because they have postponed their seasons to the spring.
The Big Ten and the Pac-12 canceled their fall sports seasosn because of concerns about the coronavirus. The Mid-American and Mountain West conferences have also said they will try to play spring football.
The ACC, Big 12, SEC, American Athletic, Conference USA and Sun Belt are forging ahead with fall sports, with changes: The three remaining Power Five conferences, the SEC, ACC, and Big 12, have eliminated all or most non-conference games and delayed the start of their seasons from one to three weeks.
All Division I teams were eligible for the preseason AP Top 25, but after the season starts, only teams scheduled to play in the fall are eligible. That leaves 76 FBS teams from which to choose.
If a spring season is played, the AP will consider doing rankings for those teams, too.
BACK-TO-BACK
Clemson had never been preseason No. 1 until last season, and now starts there again. It's the eighth time since the preseason poll started in 1950 that a team has been preseason No. 1 two straight seasons. Alabama had been preseason No. 1 from 2016-18, a three-year run.
The Tigers finished last season No. 2 after losing the championship game to LSU, snapping a remarkable run of nine seasons in which Clemson has finished with the same or better ranking than it started. That included the last five seasons in which Clemson outperformed its preseason ranking, twice finishing No. 1 after starting No. 2.
The ACC's Tigers, who also welcome back star running back Travis Etienne, standout offensive tackle Jackson Carman and sturdy defensive tackle Tyler Davis, will try to become the 12th preseason No. 1 to finish No. 1. Only two teams have gone wire-to-wire as No. 1: Florida State in 1999 and USC in 2004.