Georgia is No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25 and Ohio State is No. 2 as the expanded SEC and Big Ten flex their muscles

Georgia is No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 college football preseason poll for the second straight year as the superconference era begins with the SEC and Big Ten dominating the top 10 rankings.

The Bulldogs received 46 first-place votes and 1,532 points in the Top 25 released Monday and the SEC power finished comfortably ahead of No. 2 Ohio State (15 first-place votes and 1,490 points) of the Big Ten.

New Big Ten member Oregon is ranked third, receiving a first-place vote from the 62-member panel of media outlets that cover college football. Texas, which joins Georgia in the Southeastern Conference this season, is ranked fourth.

The Big Ten and SEC each have four teams in the top 10.

Conference restructuring has reduced the Power Five to the Power Four, and the Pac-12 has been reduced to just two schools. The Big Ten now has 18 schools. The Atlantic Coast Conference has 17 football teams, and the SEC and Big 12 each have 16.

All of this movement created an unprecedented preseason poll in which only four conferences were represented: The SEC leads with nine qualified teams, the Big Ten has six, the Big 12 has five and the ACC has four.

Alabama, in its first season without coach Nick Saban since 2006, starts at No. 5. No. 6 Mississippi gives the SEC half of its preseason top six.

Independent Notre Dame is the highest-ranked team outside of the SEC and Big Ten at No. 7.

No. 8 Penn State and No. 9 Michigan give the Big Ten four teams in the top 10. The ACC’s Florida State is No. 10.

The defending national champion Wolverines said goodbye to coach Jim Harbaugh, quarterback JJ McCarthy and 12 other players who were selected in April’s NFL draft. All that attrition led to Michigan receiving its lowest preseason ranking for a defending national champion since 2011, when Auburn was ranked No. 23 after Cam Newton left.

Before that, the last time a defending national champion was ranked worse than No. 7 in the next preseason poll was Colorado at No. 13 in 1991.

Washington, which lost to Michigan in the College Football Playoff championship game, suffered an even bigger fall after losing its head coach (Kalen DeBoer replaced Saban at Alabama), its star quarterback and a mountain of talent to the draft and transfer portal. The Huskies are the first team to make the CFP and not be ranked the following season.

Georgia began last season ranked No. 1 in pursuit of a record third straight national championship. Coach Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs held that position throughout the regular season and then missed the four-team playoff by losing the SEC title game to Alabama.

“We’re facing new challenges this year,” Smart said at SEC media days. “We don’t feel guilty about people trying to use that as motivation. I’ve never used a failure from a year ago as motivation and I’ve never used a success from a year ago as motivation; we won’t do that this year. That’s not who we are. We want to reinvent ourselves to stay in the best shape possible.”

There will be more room for error this season as the playoffs will be expanded from four to 12 teams.

The Bulldogs are 42-2 over the past three seasons and are back on a roll. Quarterback Carson Beck leads the offense and defensive back Mykel Williams is on his way to being Georgia’s next defensive star.

Beck is a rarity in college football these days, a star quarterback in his fifth season with the same school who waited three years to become a starter. Beck completed 72 percent of his passes last year, with 24 touchdowns and six interceptions.

“He’s a great senior for us and a great example of resilience in college football,” Smart said.

Repeating as the preseason No. 1 seed is a recent trend. Over the past eight seasons, Alabama had separate streaks of three (2016-18) and two (2021-22) years as the preseason No. 1 seed. Clemson held the top spot in both the 2019 and 2020 preseason rankings.

Georgia will try to become the 12th team since the AP preseason poll began in 1950 to start No. 1 and finish No. 1. The last was Alabama in 2017.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo on https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

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