There are many ways to judge the success of a college football program, and Ohio State checks almost all the boxes. You can measure by national championships, conference championships, the number of players churned out to the NFL, and more.
Another way to measure the blue bloods of college football is by the major polls. One of those — the AP Poll — has been around since 1936 and has not only crowned national champions in the past but has continued to rank the top 25 teams on a week-by-week basis. Our friends at College Football News did their own analysis and crowned the best program of all time based on the final ranking in each AP Poll, but we thought we’d look at it from another angle.
In this case, we’re taking a look at which teams have been ranked in the AP Poll the most percentage of the time throughout history. And since the Associated Press ranks the top 25, we’ll do the same.
Here are the top 25 college football programs of all time based on the percentage of time they have been ranked in the AP Poll. We count down from 25 to numero uno. All information is taken from College Poll Archive.