Welcome to the first edition of the Preseason Consensus Poll for 2018!

Each year, we try and take all of the available preseason top 25 polls and mash them together for our Preseason Consensus Poll. The premise is we use each of these polls as a “vote” for our consensus top 25. Teams ranked No. 1 get 25 points and so on down to one point for those ranked 25th.

In the first edition today, we have 23 different polls. We have polls from Phil Steele’s College Football, The Sporting News (Bill Bender), Lindy’s Sports, Athlon Sports, Street & Smith’s, ESPN.com (Mark Schlabach), SI.com (Chris Johnson), CBSSports.com (Dennis Dodd), McIlleceSports.com, Landof10.com (Wayne Staats), BleacherReport.com (David Kenyon), the Detroit Free Press, Vegas Insider.com (Brian Edwards), USA Today College Football (Paul Myerberg), Yahoo.com (Dr. Saturday), SaturdayDownSouth.com (Connor O’Gara), SaturdayBlitz.com (Zach Bigalke), TheSpun.com (Matt Hladik), CollegeFootballNews.com (Pete Fiutak), SBNation.com (Bill Connelly), FloFootballcom (Kolby Paxton), ESPN.com’s Football Power Index and ChatSports.com (Mitchell Renz).

The individual polls for each outlet are listed in the slideshow (along with a countdown of the top 25 teams in the poll).

We will update the poll in August when the Sports Illustrated preseason magazine, ESPN The Magazine preseason edition, the Associated Press media poll, the USA Today coaches poll and other polls are released. (If you see any reputable national top 25 lists we are missing, please e-mail the link to us at shelwagen@ymail.com .)

Before we get into the poll, let’s look at some notables surrounding last year’s poll, this year’s poll, bowl projections and more.

Wrapping Up 2017

We posted the 2017 edition of the poll in mid-August. Last year’s poll was somewhat helpful in at least identifying nine of the 12 teams that played in the New Years’ Six games. Last year’s poll only identified one of the four teams in the College Football Playoff, however.

The top four in that poll were Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State and USC. Eventual national champion Alabama was the only school in that group to make the playoff. The other playoff participants were Georgia (16th), Oklahoma (seventh) and Clemson (fifth).

Alabama ultimately won the College Football Playoff, defeating Georgia 26-23 in overtime in the championship game.

Of the poll’s top 12 teams, nine of them played in the New Years’ Six bowls. Besides the two in the Playoff field, the other top-12 teams that played in major bowls were Ohio State (second, played in Cotton Bowl), USC (fourth, Cotton Bowl), Penn State (sixth, Fiesta Bowl), Washington (eighth, Fiesta Bowl), Wisconsin (11th, Orange Bowl) and Auburn (ninth, Peach Bowl).

Others that played in the New Years’ Six were: Miami (Fla.) (18th, played in Orange Bowl) and Central Florida (unranked, played in Peach Bowl).

Teams in the top 12 that did not make the New Years’ Six included Florida State (third), Michigan (10th) and Oklahoma State (12th).

This shows that, although your favorite team may not be in the top four to start the year, there is some hope – perhaps a lot of hope -- that they will still have a shot at the CFB Playoff.

College Football Playoff Projections For 2018-19

This is the fifth season of the four-team College Football Playoff. We will use today’s edition of the poll to project how the playoff bowl pairings and New Years’ Six bowls will look.

Defending national champion Alabama has 15 of the 23 first-place votes and goes into the season as the clear No. 1. Clemson has six first-place votes and sits second. No. 3 Ohio State has two first-place votes. Georgia and Wisconsin round out the top five at fourth and fifth, respectively. It should be noted that Oklahoma and Washington are tied for sixth, just four voting points behind Wisconsin.

In terms of conference strength, the question turns on how you define strength. The Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 each have five teams in the top 25. The ACC has four top-25 teams. The Pac-12 has three top-25 teams. The nation’s toughest division appears to be the Big Ten East with four teams in the top 12 nationally.

The highest ranked independent team is Notre Dame at No. 14. The Mountain West has one top-25 team with Boise State at No. 22, while the American Athletic Conference has one team in the top 25 with No. 23 Central Florida.

Based on the rankings, here is what the five major conference championship games would look like:

* Pac-12 Championship (at Santa Clara, Calif.); Fri., Nov. 30, 8 p.m. (FOX) – Washington (ranked sixth) would represent the North Division against South Division champion USC (15th). Those teams are not scheduled to meet in the regular season.

* ACC Championship (at Charlotte, N.C.); Sat., Dec. 1; time, TV TBA – No. 2 Clemson would represent the Atlantic Division, while No. 8 Miami (Fla.) would advance from the Coastal Division. This would be a rematch from last year’s title game, which Clemson won 38-3.

* Big 12 Championship (at Arlington, Texas); Sat., Dec. 1; time TBA (FOX) – The top two teams would be rematched in the title game. That would pit No. 6 Oklahoma against No. 19 TCU. Those teams would first play on Oct. 20 at TCU. Oklahoma took two wins over TCU last year (38-20 in regular season and 41-17 in Big 12 title game).

* SEC Championship (at Atlanta); Sat., Dec. 2; 4 p.m. (CBS) – No. 1 Alabama would rep the West with No. 4 Georgia coming out of the East. Those teams are not scheduled to meet in the regular season. Alabama defeated Georgia in the CFB Playoff national title game last year.

* Big Ten Championship (at Indianapolis); Sat., Dec. 2; 8 p.m. (FOX) – This game would have Ohio State (ranked fourth) from the East and Wisconsin (ranked fifth) from the West. This would be a rematch from last year’s title game, which Ohio State won 27-21.

And, based on the rankings, here is what the New Years’ Six and CFB Playoff games would look like (all games on ESPN):

* Peach Bowl (at Atlanta); Sat., Dec. 29, noon – Miami (Fla.) (8) vs. Penn State (10)

* Cotton Bowl/CFB Playoff Semifinal (at Arlington, Texas); Sat., Dec. 29, 4 or 8 p.m. – Alabama (1) vs. Georgia (4) … Theoretically, this would be a rematch of the SEC title game. Alabama, as the top seed, would get geographical preference with Dallas marginally closer to Tuscaloosa than Miami … Obviously, this poll puts two SEC teams in the playoff for the second year in a row. Projected champions from the Big 12 and Pac-12 would be on the outside looking in.

* Orange Bowl/CFB Playoff Semifinal (at Miami Gardens, Fla.); Sat., Dec. 29, 4 or 8 p.m. – Clemson (2) vs. Ohio State (3) … This would be a rematch from a 2016 semifinal game, which Clemson won 31-0.

* Fiesta Bowl (at Glendale, Ariz.); Tues., Jan. 1, 1 p.m. – Michigan State (11) vs. Boise State (22) … Boise State gets a spot in the New Years’ Six as the highest ranked team from a Group of Five conference.

* Rose Bowl (at Pasadena, Calif.); Tues. Jan. 1, 5 p.m. – Wisconsin (5) vs. Washington (6) … The Big Ten/Pac-12 rivalry continues with the best teams available outside the playoff.

* Sugar Bowl (at New Orleans); Tues., Jan. 1, 8:45 p.m. – Auburn (9) vs. Oklahoma (6) … The best available teams from the SEC and Big 12 meet here.

* CFB Playoff National Championship (at Santa Clara, Calif.); Mon., Jan. 7, 8 p.m. – Semifinal winners square off … Levi Stadium, home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, will host the national title game.

2018 Preseason Consensus Poll

Here is a look at the first edition of the Preseason Consensus Poll for 2018 (last year’s record and first-place votes in parentheses; NOTE: Every effort is made to accurately reflect and record each top 25 in the “voting process.” If there is a mathematical error, please share as a response to this story):

Alabama (13-1 in 2017; 15 first-place votes), 565 voting points Clemson (12-2; six first-place votes), 539 points Ohio State (12-2; two first-place votes), 517 points Georgia (13-2), 493 points Wisconsin (13-1), 450 points (tie) Oklahoma (12-2), 446 points (tie) Washington (10-3), 446 points Miami (Fla.) (10-2), 375 points Auburn (10-4), 359 points Penn State (11-2), 356 points Michigan State (10-3), 314 points Michigan (8-5), 299 points Stanford (9-5), 298 points Notre Dame (10-3), 261 points USC (11-3), 214 points Virginia Tech (9-4), 178 points Florida State (7-6), 157 points Mississippi State (9-4), 155 points TCU (11-3), 144 points West Virginia (7-6), 131 points LSU (9-4), 106 points Boise State (11-3), 103 points Central Florida (13-0), 98 points Texas (7-6), 91 points Oklahoma State (10-3), 75 points Oregon (7-6), 58 points South Carolina (9-4), 44 points Florida (4-7), 36 points Texas A&M (7-6), 28 points Florida Atlantic (11-3), 26 points Washington State (9-4), 20 points Louisville (8-5), 18 points (tie) Memphis (10-3), 9 points (tie) Northwestern (10-3), 9 points (tie) N.C. State (8-4), 8 points (tie) San Diego State (10-3), 8 points (tie) Tennessee (4-8), 8 points Arizona (7-6), 6 points (tie) Iowa State (8-5), 5 points (tie) Kansas State (8-5), 5 points (tie) Nebraska (4-8), 4 points (tie) Utah (7-6), 4 points (tie) Boston College (7-6), 3 points (tie) Georgia Tech (5-6), 3 points (tie) Missouri (7-6), 3 points South Florida (10-2), 2 points (tie) Arkansas State (7-5), 1 point (tie) Iowa (8-5), 1 point (tie) Ole Miss (6-6), 1 point (tie) UCLA (6-7), 1 point

The individual polls are listed in the slideshow. We will update the poll in August.

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