Adding to the unusual nature of this college football season is the debut of the first Associated Press poll, which came out today. The twist, which confused many college football fans, is that Big Ten, Pac-12 teams were included, even though their fall seasons have been called off.

“It was more of: Let’s give people a look at what the preseason would have been, but once the games start, we will only rank the teams that are playing,” AP writer Ralph D. Russo said in an interview on The Paul Finebaum Show. “It was the preseason, nobody has played, and quite frankly, nobody is guaranteed to play.”

Russo said this college football season will be about what has been lost, and what can be salvaged, and what was completed and left behind.

The plan going forward is to start ranking teams in the regular season after the second week of the season, Sept. 12. The ACC, Big 12 and other smaller conferences will have started by then based on their revised schedules.

“We felt like there needed to be a representative sample size of games and then everybody can start ranking,” Russo said.

Later in the show, Finebaum reminded a caller that these days, the only poll that really matters in the end is the College Football Playoff poll, which will be released in November and the final rankings in December.