Which college football programs have earned the right to be in the conversation for greatest of all-time?

Using every final AP Top 25 Poll since 1935, College Football News has developed a formula to accurately rank the nation's top programs.

From CFN: "Taking all the AP final rankings, CFN devised a scoring system giving every AP national champion 25 points, the No. 2 team 24, No. 3 23, and so on down to the bottom – currently No. 25, but there was a top ten for a bit and later a top 20. Rankings from 1935 through to Clemson’s national championship after the 2018 season."

Speaking of the defending national champions, Clemson is unbeaten through seven weeks and currently ranked No. 3 in the AP Top 25 behind Alabama and LSU. The Tigers are chasing their own history, hoping to capture their third title in four years.

“We are not trying to catch Alabama or pass Alabama or anything,” Dabo Swinney said in May. “We are just trying to be the best Clemson we can be year in and year out, regardless of what anybody else is doing out there. That is really my focus day in and day out, year in and year out.”

You'll recognize several bluebloods in these rankings, but there's a few others that may surprise you. The no-brainers near the top come in ahead of other nationally-ranked programs with high expectations annually who are always in the mix: