Preseason College Football Rankings 2012: SEC Will Live Up to Preseason Hype

The SEC has six schools in the Associated Press Top 25, and five of those schools (Alabama, LSU, Georgia, South Carolina and Arkansas) are in the Top 10.

As usual, the SEC is expected to be college football's top conference. And once again, it will live up to the hype.

The SEC has won the BCS National Championship six straight years. The conference was 5-2 in bowl games other than the national championship game last year, which was of course contested between two SEC teams, Alabama and LSU.

Oh, and the additions of Missouri and Texas A&M will only make the conference more competitive. As if the SEC really needed to be more competitive.

We'll get a good idea of how the conference stacks up against the rest of the country early in the season. Alabama takes on Michigan in one of the season's most exciting matchups, on September 1. That same day, Auburn and Clemson are set to do battle.

Of course, the season will probably come down to the battle for the SEC West waged among Alabama, LSU and Arkansas. There's a pretty good chance that whichever team manages to come out of the West unscathed will find itself in the national championship game.

Well, if they survive the SEC Championship, that is.

How would you like to be Nick Saban, who has so much talent on hand he can lose five players in the first 35 picks in the NFL draft and still be ranked No. 2 heading into the next season?

Or how about Les Miles, who dismisses a Heisman Trophy finalist from a year ago, Tyrann Mathieu, and still is No. 3 in the country?

South Carolina gets stud runner Marcus Lattimore back from injury. Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson and running back Knile Davis will be on Heisman watch lists this season. Georgia looks like it will have an excellent, senior-laden defense.

From top to bottom, the SEC looks poised to own college football once again in 2012. The rest of the country might not like it, but these days, the best college football is being played down south.

Here are the full AP Top 25 rankings:

RANK	TEAM	POINTS
1	USC (25)	1445
2	Alabama (17)	1411
3	LSU (16)	1402
4	Oklahoma (1)	1286
5	Oregon	1274
6	Georgia	1107
7	Florida State	1093
8	Michigan (1)	1000
9	South Carolina	994
10	Arkansas	963
11	West Virginia	856
12	Wisconsin	838
13	Michigan State	742
14	Clemson	615
15	Texas	569
16	Virginia Tech	548
17	Nebraska	485
18	Ohio State	474
19	Oklahoma State	430
20	TCU	397
21	Stanford	383
22	Kansas State	300
23	Florida	214
24	Boise State	212
25	Louisville	105

Hit me up on Twitter—my tweets are cracking like a Ronda Rousey armbar.