The Contributors

The Student News College Top 32 features a national panel of sports writers from flagship student newspapers. While the poll will expand over time, these founding publications are leading the way:

The Format

National Top 32 vs. Top 25

Why 32 teams? 25 teams is the traditional standard. Given the increase in parity, especially between teams at the tail end of the poll, moving to 32 allows inclusion of teams that would have been very close to the cut, while keeping the number manageable.

Conference Rankings

In addition to a national poll, the Student News College polls will also include select rankings by conference, with ballots and analysis by those conference’s newspapers.

Scoring

While the traditional polls assign points to teams and add those across ballots, the Student News College Top 32 uses a straight-forward average. With this method, readers can more intuitively understand the relative strength of a team’s ranking.