Public Radio for the Piedmont and High Country
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Clemson Tops AP football poll; Tar Heels No. 1 In AP Preseason Basketball

WFDD file photo

ACC teams sit atop both the AP football and preseason basketball polls. The last time Clemson and North Carolina were linked at the top of the respective polls, it turned out well for both teams.

Unbeaten Clemson bumped Ohio State from the top spot in the AP football poll after the Tigers defeated Florida State Saturday.

In basketball, the Tar Heels are atop the preseason AP poll for a record ninth time, breaking a tie it had shared with UCLA. UNC returns four starters from last year's team, which went 26-12 and reached the Sweet Sixteen.

The return to the top of the football poll has been a long wait for Clemson, which was last ranked No. 1 in 1981. That team defeated Nebraska in the Orange Bowl and was named the national champions.

UNC was also the preseason number one in basketball that year. A few months after the Tigers won it all in football, UNC won the NCAA basketball title with the help of winning jump shot by a freshman, named Michael Jordan.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

Support quality journalism, like the story above,
with your gift right now.

Donate