1936 College Football Season

The 1936 college football season was the first in which the Associated Press writers' poll selected a national champion. The first AP poll, taken of 35 writers, was released on October 20, 1936. Each writer listed his choice for the top ten teams, and points were tallied based on 10 for first place, 9 for second, etc., and the AP then ranked the twenty teams with the highest number of points. In the first poll, Minnesota received 32 first place votes, and 3 votes for an additional 25 points, for a total of 345 altogether . The year 1936 also saw the addition of another major New Year's Day game, as Dallas hosted the first Cotton Bowl Classic.

Major conferences that existed in 1936 were the Western Conference (today's Big Ten), the Pacific Coast Conference (now the Pac-12), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the old Southern Conference (whose members later played in the ACC), the Big Six (later the Big 12) and the Southwest Conference.