Southern Fans' College Poll

The Southern Fans' College Football Poll refers to a weekly ranking of the top 16 NCAA Division I college football and Division I teams. The rankings are compiled by polling a dedicated group of college football supporters across the Southeastern United States. Each voter provides his own ranking of the top 16 teams, and the individual rankings are then combined to produce the national ranking by giving a team 16 points for a first place vote, 15 for a second place vote, and so on down to 1 point for a sixteenth-place vote. Ballots of the voting members in the Southern Fans' Poll are made public.

College football

The Southern Fans' college football poll has a short history. The Southern Fans began running their own poll to determine who was, by popular opinion, the best football team in the country at the end of the season. While other polls presently list 25 teams in their respective polls, the Southern Fans' Poll includes only the top 16 teams in the country. This is to focus attention to primarily the top teams in the country, make inclusion in the rankings more rewarding (while limiting the number of teams that can claim to have been ranked) and is also a hark to most collegiate fans' push for a playoff.

The poll began during the 2007 college football season, with the national champion named in the final poll following the BCS National Championship game. As the Southern Fans' College Football Poll is an independent poll, the pollsters are not required to vote the winner BCS National Championship as their number one team. Even as this is the case, it did not stop pollsters from naming LSU the nation's number one team following the Tigers' win over Ohio State in the 2008 BCS National Championship Game, nor naming Florida No. 1 after the Gator's defeated Oklahoma 24-14 in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game.

Historical Polls

Since the beginning of the 2007 college football season, the number one ranked team has played the number two team twice: No. 2 Florida faced off against No. 1 Alabama in the SEC Championship Game on December 6, 2008; No. 2 Florida played No. 1 Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship Game on January 8, 2009. With the Gators' two victories, the number two team is 2-0 against the number one team. Through the 2008 season, only two teams have been ranked in every Southern Fans' College Football Poll since its inception in 2007:

• Oklahoma
• Florida

Teams that had been ranked for at least one week through the 2008 regular season: Alabama
Arizona State
Auburn
Ball State
Boise State
Boston College
BYU
California
Cincinnati
Clemson
Connecticut
East Carolina
Florida
Florida State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Hawaii
Illinois
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisville
LSU
Michigan
Michigan State
Missouri
Nebraska
North Carolina
Ohio State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Oregon
Oregon State
Penn State
Rutgers
South Carolina
South Florida
Southern Cal
Tennessee
Texas
Texas Christian
Texas Tech
Tulsa
UCLA
Utah
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest
West Virginia
Wisconsin

This chart below shows the Southern Fans' No. 1 ranked team for every weekly poll.

Other media football polls

The Southern Fans' College Football Poll is not the only college football poll to award a national championship. The other major polls include the Associated Press Poll; the Football Writers Association of America Poll, which award the Grantland Rice Award to their choice of the nation's number one team; the Coaches Poll, which has been sponsored by several organizations: the United Press (1950-1957), the United Press International (1958-1990), USA Today (1991-present), CNN (1991-1996), and ESPN (1997-2005). Having multiple major polls has led to numerous "split" national titles, where the polls disagreed on the #1 team.

There are other national weekly polls conducted but do not name a national champion, including the Collegefootballnews.com Poll, the Harris Interactive College Football Poll, ESPN's Power Ranking Top 25, and the CBS Sportsline Poll. ESPN also publishes a weekly Bottom 10 during the regular season, showcasing the worst ten teams in college football.

Southern Fans' Poll exclusion in the BCS

In 1997, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was developed to try to unify the poll results by picking two teams for a "real" national championship game. For the first several years the AP Poll and Coaches' Poll factored in the determination of the BCS rankings, along with computer-based polls. Because of a series of controversies surrounding the BCS, the AP demanded in December 2004, that its poll no longer be used in the BCS rankings. In 2005, the Harris Interactive College Football Poll was created to be used in place of the AP Poll. While the Southern Fans' poll was not created until 2007, it has yet to be offered an invitation to be included in the computation of the BCS.

College basketball

While many polls, including the Associated Press and Coaches' polls create a weekly top 25 for mens' and women's basketball, the Southern Fans' pollsters currently only create a poll for the college football season.

List of voters

2008-2009 season

The following lists the 30 members who voted in the 2008-2009 college football season Southern Fans' College Football.

• Doug Bendinger, First year
• Rich Brothers, First year
• John Boyd, First year
• Alex Bozarth, Second year
• John Buzbee, Second year
• Rob Carlton, Second year
• Ross Carlton, Second year
• Steve Carpenter, First year
• Jeremy Casey, Second year
• Kumar Chadha, Second year
• Anil Chadha, Second year
• Ashley Chadha, Second year
• Greg Frayser, First year
• David Howard, First year
• Hal Humphrey, Second year

• Nik Mahrt, Second year
• Travis Markle, Second year
• Jof Mehaffey, Second year
• Jon Perry, First year
• Jeff Renfo, First year
• Jon Renfro, First year
• Max Renfo, First year
• Jordan Renna, First year
• David Schulte, Second year
• Eddie Slep, First year
• Brian Smith, First year
• Edwin Sweeten, First year
• Jason Templeton, Second year
• Lee Walters, First year
• Jarad Wilson, First year

2007-2008 season

The following lists the 16 members who voted in the 2007-2008 college football season Southern Fans' College Football.

• Alex Bozarth
• John Buzbee
• Ross Carlton
• Rob Carlton
• Jeremy Casey
• Michael Chasteen
• Anil Chadha
• Ashley Chadha

• Kumar Chadha
• Pete Fuitak
• Hal Humphrey
• Nik Mahrt
• Travis Markle
• Jof Mehaffey
• David Schulte
• Jason Templeton

Southern Fans' National Champions

National Team of the Week

Beginning in the 2008 season, the Southern Fans' pollsters began issuing a National Team of the Week. Members of the Southern Fan's pool of voters decide the weekly honor. Each Tuesday during the college football season, the Southern Fans name the National Team of the Week through the final week of the regular season.

See also

• Bowl Championship Series
• Coaches Poll
• Dickinson System
• Game of the Century (college football)
• Grantland Rice Award
• Harris Interactive College Football Poll
• Mythical National Championship
• NCAA Division I-A national football championship

External links

• The Associated Press Top 25 College Football Poll at Sports Illustrated
• The Associated Press Top 25 Men's College Basketball Poll at Sports Illustrated
• List of all Final AP Poll results and champions
• Weekly AP football polls from 1936-present