The 1962 small college football rankings are rankings of

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

teams representing smaller college and university teams during the 1962 college football season, including the

1962 NCAA College Division football season The 1962 NCAA College Division football season was the seventh season of college football in the United States organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association at the NCAA College Division level. Conference standings Rankings Small c ...

and the

1962 NAIA football season The 1962 NAIA football season was the seventh season of college football sponsored by the NAIA. The season was played from August to December 1962, culminating in the seventh annual NAIA Football National Championship, played this year at Hughe ...

. Separate rankings were published by the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

(AP) and the

United Press International United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ...

(UPI). The AP rankings were selected by a board of eight sports writers, and the UPI rankings were selected by a board of small-college coaches from throughout the country. In the final AP poll, the 1962 Florida A&M Rattlers football team were rated No. 1. The Rattlers subsequently lost to Jackson State in the

Orange Blossom Classic The Orange Blossom Classic is an annual college football game first held between 1933 and 1978 and again since 2021. In its first incarnation, it featured Florida A&M and another historically black school in an unofficial ''de facto'' championsh ...

. Other teams ranked by the AP included

Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon language, Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the Ri ...

(9–0) at No. 2 and

Central Oklahoma Central Oklahoma is the geographical name for the central region of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is also known by the Oklahoma Department of Tourism designation, Frontier Country, defined as the twelve-county region including Canadian, Grady, ...

(11–0) at No. 3. In the final UPI poll, the 1962 Southern Miss Southerners football team (9–1) was selected as the small-college national champion. Southern Miss lost one game – to Memphis State by an 8–6 score.

Legend

The AP poll

The UPI Coaches poll

Notes

References

{{NCAA football rankings navbox

Rankings A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of ...

NCAA College Division football rankings