Florida Gators Top Preseason NCAA Football AP Poll

Florida State University football fans won’t want to hear it, of course, but the Florida Gators have been named the number 1 team in the nation in the Associated Press’s annual NCAA football preseason top 25 poll. The Gators have already won two of the last three national championships and this year saw the most overwhelming preseason number 1 vote in the history of the AP poll. Florida is followed in the poll by Texas, Oklahoma, Southern California and Alabama. In gaining the preseason number 1 ranking, Florida received 58 of the 60 first-place votes, good for 96.7% of the total. While Texas received two votes, that percentage for Florida bested the previous high of 95.4%, which went to USC in 2007.

Florida coach Urban Meyer has his hands full trying to brush aside preseason rankings and just keep his team focused on winning football games. "There’s a lot of guys getting patted on the back and being told how good they are. Their only focus is on survival to the next day and working hard in practice. I don’t want them to even think about that kind of stuff. Our goal is to get to Atlanta," said Meyer, referring to the SEC championship game, which is held in Atlanta this year.

Outside the aforementioned top 5 teams in the AP poll were Ohio State, Virginia Tech, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Penn State, with the latter two teams tying for 9th on the list. Speaking of his team and his star quarterback, Tim Tebow, Meyer went on to say, "I’d say in the passing game he can certainly improve some things. Leadership-wise he used to get angry when he felt other guys weren’t working as hard as he was. Now he gets those players to play at that level."