Tuscaloosa, Alabama - The University of Alabama’s football team is heading into the upcoming college football season ranked number one, according to the preseason coaches' poll results that came out on Tuesday.

The 65 football coaches who each lead a team in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) came together and voted by an overwhelming majority to crown the Crimson Tide the team to beat this fall. The defending national champions were choice of 63 out of 65 of participants.

Nick Saban (69) has been the head coach of the Tide through six national championships over 14 seasons. That kind of success will almost always have you at the top of the pack.

It’s not easy for them to stick with that kind of consistency though. They are usually among the handful of schools that constantly lose several players each year in the annual NFL Draft. In this past draft, Alabama lost ten players to the NFL with six of them being picked in the first round, including names like Mac Jones (Patriots) and Najee Harris (Steelers).

Their machine keeps running anyway as they will have yet another highly-rated prospect quarterbacking and a roster loaded with future NFL draft picks when they start the year against the Miami Hurricanes on September 4.

Clemson is a perennial top-tier team expected to do very well each year and this upcoming campaign is no different. Even though the Tigers are ranked second, they’ll be without the 2021 overall number one pick, Trevor Lawrence, who went to Jacksonville.

The Oklahoma Sooners are in the third spot, while the Ohio State Buckeyes are fourth, coming into this new season also having lost a top-rated passer in Justin Fields, who headed to the Bears in this past April’s draft.

The University of Georgia Bulldogs rounded out the top five college football programs.

The first scheduled game of the 2021 FBS season kicks off on August 28 between Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Illinois Fighting Illini.