Three Florida schools ranked in this preseason football poll — and one notable exclusion

Athlon Sports released its projections for the 2018 college football season Monday.

The predictions include final rankings for college football's top 25.

Three Florida programs, Florida State, Florida and Miami, are all included.

Noticeably absent is UCF.

UCF finished the 2018 season as college football's lone unbeaten team in the FBS. The Knights went 12-0 in the regular season, before beating Auburn in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. Since that victory, UCF declared itself national champions, held a victory parade at Orlando's Walt Disney World, put up a championship banner, ordered championship rings and got into a war of words with Alabama.

The Crimson Tide won last year's College Football Playoff with a 26-23 overtime victory over Georgia in the national title game.

Those two programs as well as Clemson and Ohio State are projected as this year's CFP teams, according to Athlon Sports.

The rankings for the state schools making the list are as follows: Florida (No. 17), FSU (No. 13) and Miami (No. 6). Like UCF, the University of South Florida was also left off the list.

Here's how Athlon Sports sees the top 25 when the 2018 season finishes:

1. Alabama

2. Clemson

3. Georgia

4. Ohio State

5. Michigan

6. Miami

7. Auburn

8. Washington

9. Wisconsin

10. Oklahoma

11. Penn State

12. Michigan State

13. Florida State

14. Mississippi State

15. Notre Dame

16. Virginia Tech

17. Florida

18. Stanford

19. Boise State

20. Texas

21. USC

22. West Virginia

23. Oregon

24. TCU

25. Texas A&M

This story was originally published May 21, 2018 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Three Florida schools ranked in this preseason football poll — and one notable exclusion."