AP Top 25: LSU drops out of poll for first time since 2017
LSU is excluded from The Associated Press college football poll for the first time since 2017 and is the first defending national champion to drop out of the rankings in nine years.
Clemson No. 1, Alabama No. 2, and Georgia No. 3 stayed at the top of the leaderboard on Sunday and set up a top three matchup on Saturday when the Crimson Tide hosts the Bulldogs.
Clemson received 59 votes in first place. Alabama got two and Georgia got one. Notre Dame moved up to # 4 and North Carolina is # 5.
LSU dropped from 17th place after falling to 2-1 with a 45:41 loss in Missouri that had previously been without a win. The tigers had been classified in 43 direct polls as of November 5, 2017. That was the seventh longest active series in the nation.
The last defending champion not featured in the rankings was Auburn in 2011. After Cam Newton's departure, the Tigers spent much of season 11 outside the top 25 at 8-5 and unranked.
POLLING POINTS
This is the second week in a row that one of the traditional forces of college football has fallen off the rankings. The LSU follows Oklahoma.
The Sooners were left without rank on Sunday, even after beating Texas in four hours overtime. The Longhorns dropped out of the top 25 for the first time this season with their second straight loss, but that's little big news at the moment.
Texas hasn't had a start-to-finish season since 2009.
The last time both Oklahoma and LSU were out of the rankings was also the last time before this season when the Sooners dropped out of the polls: September 25, 2016. This was a week-long departure for OU, which followed the Big 12 won from 1-2.
The last time Oklahoma made two straight top 25s without a ranking was in the last two polls of the 2014 season, when the Sooners ended 8-5 and lost their last two games.
IN THE
-No. 22 Kansas State will be rated for the first time this season. The Wildcats made a few brief appearances in the top 25 last year.
-No. 25 Southern California is the newest team still waiting to begin its season to return to the top 25. The Trojans were classified in the preseason and then were no longer eligible at the start of the season, and the Pac-12 wanted to try to play along the winter / spring. When the conference decided to return after the Big Ten in November, their teams could be re-ranked.
ABOVE
No. 11 Texas A&M jumped 10 places after defeating No. 10 Florida in a college station thriller. The Gators slipped six places.
LOW
No. 13 Miami lost six spots after losing for the first time this season. The hurricanes received a serious dose of reality and lost at Clemson 42-17.
CONFERENCE CALL
One week after the first appearance of four top 10 teams, the Atlantic Coast Conference reached another milestone with three top 5 teams. North Carolina has its best placement since November 1997, the climax of Coach Mack Brown's first appearance at Chapel Hill.
Related: The Big Ten is two weeks ahead of the game and there are still 10 voters waiting for the Ohio State No. 6 and other still-boisterous teams to start playing before rating them.
SEC-6 (No. 2, 3, 10, 11, 15, 18)
ACC-5 (No. 1, 4, 5, 13, 23)
Big Ten-5 (No. 6, 9, 16, 19, 24).
Big 12-3 (No. 7, 20, 22).
Americans - 2 (No. 8, 17).
Pac-12-2 (No. 12, 15).
Sun belt - 1 (No. 21).
Independent - 1 (No. 14).
RANKING vs. RANKING
The only game that fits leaderboards this week is the most anticipated regular season game of the year.
No. 3 Georgia at No. 2 Alabama. First meeting in the regular season since 2015 and for the first time since 2007 in Tuscaloosa.
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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP and listen at http://www.westwoodonepodcasts.com/pods/ap-top-25-college-football-podcast/.
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More AP College Football: https://apnews.com/Collegefootball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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