My final AP Top 25 ballot for the 2025 season
It took a few minutes to finalize my Associated Press Top 25 ballot for the final time in the 2025-26 season.
The very top was easy: Indiana was the clear call for No. 1 after defeating Miami 27-21 in the College Football Playoff championship game Monday to complete a surreal 16-0 season.
But then it got tricky as I debated whether Miami or Ohio State should be No. 2.
The case for OSU would be the following:
Yes, the Hurricanes won the head-to-head matchup in the CFP quarterfinals. But remove that single datapoint, and everything else falls in Ohio State’s favor. The Buckeyes were a better team and had a markedly better resume than Miami for the entirety of the regular season.
And the final AP ballot accounts for five months of competition, not a single result in the CFP.
So I gave serious consideration to slotting Ohio State directly behind Indiana.
Ultimately, I settled on Miami for the simple reason that a head-to-head result in the CFP, on a neutral field, is more meaningful than a head-to-head result in the regular season. Miami’s 10-point win in the Cotton Bowl trumped whatever advantages the Buckeyes held in other facets of the resume showdown.
But I don’t feel great about it. Not at all.
Voting in the AP poll in the playoff era is different from voting in the BCS era, and voting in the 12-team/four round playoff era is different from voting in the four-team/two round era.
And voting in the 16-team era, which could very well arrive next fall, would be different, as well.
Here’s the final ballot that I submitted to the AP tonight:
1. Indiana
2. Miami
3. Ohio State
4. Mississippi
5. Georgia
6. Oregon
7. Notre Dame
8. Alabama
9. Texas Tech
10. Oklahoma
11. Texas
12. Texas A&M
13. BYU
14. Utah
15. USC
16. Michigan
17. Iowa
18. Vanderbilt
19. Virginia
20. Missouri
21. Houston
22. Georgia Tech
23. Arizona
24. Washington
25. Tulane
Lastly, here are my early Top 25 rankings for the 2026 season.
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