The AP poll is has been the most consistent ranking system over the long history of college football. What programs come out best? Here are the top programs according to a CFN formula using all the AP’s final rankings.

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The AP college football rankings don’t have anything to do with the College Football Playoff process, and they haven’t had a part in determining the actual national champion for over a decade, but they’ve been the most consistent and reliable polls since 1936.

There might have been times when the AP rankings went rogue – making the biggest splash in 2003 naming USC the national champion, and not BCS Champion LSU – and they’ve played a part in the past when it comes to split title winners. They just keep on marching along.

There might be other polls out there, and there are several other historical markers to go by, but the AP college football rankings have been around long enough to provide a proper snapshot of the last 80 years.

Here’s the drill. 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.

What does this all prove? Consistency is great, consistency at a high level matters more, and winning national championships – or coming close – becomes a gamechanger.

Over a three-year span, a school could finish 15th – getting 33 overall points according to this system – and it would be behind a team that won a national title one year, 17th the next, and unranked the following year.

AP Final Rankings Greatest Teams Of All-Time

These rankings are created according to the CFN scoring system – this isn’t the official AP ranking of its all-time greatest teams.

Rankings from 1935 through to Alabama’s national championship after the 2017 season.

Top Teams Of The … 1930s | 1940s | 1950s

1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s