NEW YORK (AP) — Georgia will open the season ranked No. 1 in the preseason USA Today Coaches Poll a year after having its two-year run as national champion end.
The Bulldogs received 46 of the 55 first-place votes from college football coaches in the team released on Monday. Preseason No. 2 Ohio State got seven votes at No. 1, followed by Oregon, Texas and Alabama.
The Associated Press preseason college football poll is scheduled to be released next Monday.
Texas and defending national champion Michigan each got a first-place vote. The Wolverines will open ranked No. 8 after losing coach Jim Harbaugh and quarterback JJ McCarthy to the NFL.
Mississippi's No. 6 ranking represents the highest preseason ranking for the Rebels in the coaches poll since 1970. Notre Dame is No. 7, followed by Michigan, Penn State and Florida State.
The SEC's Missouri (11) and LSU (12) were just outside the Top 10.
The Southeastern Conference had nine teams in the poll, including half of the Top 12. It’s the highest starting spot for Texas since 2010 and the lowest for the Crimson Tide since 2009.
The Big Ten also had four teams in the Top 10 and six ranked overall while the Big 12 opens with five ranked teams.
Independent Notre Dame was the only team outside the Power 4 conferences ranked.
National runner-up Washington just missed the Top 25.
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll
FILE - Ohio State head coach Ryan Day speaks during an NCAA college football news conference at the Big Ten Conference media days at Lucas Oil Stadium, on July 23, 2024, in Indianapolis. Ohio State opened camp on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024 with the usual towering expectations but also a heavy sense of urgency built up over the three consecutive seasons blown up by losses to Michigan. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Houses swept away to the very last brick. Inmates frantically fleeing the city's main prison as its walls got washed away by water rising from an overflowing dam. Corpses of crocodiles and snakes floating among human bodies on what used to be main streets.
As torrential rains across Central and West Africa have unleashed the most catastrophic floods in decades, residents of Maiduguri, the capital of the fragile Nigerian state of Borno — which has been at the center of an Islamic extremists' insurgency — said they have seen it all.
The floods, which have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands across the region this year, have worsened existing humanitarian crises in the countries which have been impacted the most: Chad, Nigeria, Mali and Niger. Over four million people have been affected by flooding so far this year in West Africa, a threefold increase from last year, according to the U.N.
With rescue operations still underway, it is impossible to give an accurate count of lives lost in the water. So far, at least 230 were reported dead in Nigeria, 265 in Niger, 487 in Chad and 55 in Mali, which has seen the most catastrophic flooding since the 1960s.
While Africa is responsible for a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is among the most vulnerable to extreme weather events, the World Meteorological Organization said earlier this month. In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of adapting to extreme weather events is estimated between $30-50 billion annually over the next decade, the report said. It warned that up to 118 million Africans could be impacted by extreme weather by 2030.
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, has been under significant strain. Over the last decade, Borno has been hit by a constant string of attacks from Boko Haram militants, who want to install an Islamic state in Nigeria and have killed more than 35,000 people in the last decade.
Saleh Bukar, a 28-year-old from Maiduguri, said he was woken up last week around midnight by his neighbors.
"Water is flooding everywhere!" he recalled their frantic screams in a phone interview. “They were shouting: ’Everybody come out, everybody come out!” Older people and people with disabilities did not know what was going on, he said, and some were left behind. Those who did not wake up on time drowned right away.
Local authorities are overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster: over 400,000 people in Nigeria have been displaced, and at least 240 people were killed.
Last week, floods killed about 80% of the animals at the Borno State Museum Park and an unspecified number of reptiles escaped. The city's main prison was so damaged that hundreds of inmates escaped. The waters knocked down the walls of the local police station and some of the government's offices.
The World Food Program has set up kitchens providing food to the displaced in Maiduguri as well as emergency food and cash assistance to people in the most hard-hit areas. USAID said Wednesday it has provided more than $3 million in humanitarian assistance to West and Central Africa, including $1 million provided in the immediate aftermath of the floods.
But many say they were left to fend for themselves.
Floods in mostly arid Niger have impacted over 841,000 people, killing hundreds and displacing more than 400,000.
Harira Adamou, a 50-year-old single mother of six, is one of them. She said the floods destroyed her mud hut in the northern city of Agadez.
“The rooms are destroyed; the walls fell down," she said. “It's a big risk to live in a mud hut but we don’t have the means to build concrete ones.”
Adamou, who is unemployed and lost her husband four years ago, said she has not received any support from the state and has not had the opportunity — or the means — to relocate. She and her children are living in a temporary shelter next to their shattered hut, and fret that the torrential rains might return.
“I understood there was a change in the weather,” she said. “I have never seen a big rain like this year here in Agadez.”
In Maiduguri, 15% of the city remains underwater, according to local authorities. As forecasts predicted more rains across the region, Nigerian authorities warned earlier this week that more floods are expected.
Bukar said he kept going back to see whether the water that swallowed his home had receded, but that has not happened. He said he has not received any aid from authorities except for some food items handed out at the local school, where he is sheltering with 5,000 others.
He is trying to stay sane by helping others. Along with his friend, he helped recover 10 bodies and rescued 25 people, rowing down the streets in a canoe. He said he's also helping out cooking meals for those that are sheltering with him.
"I am volunteering to help, but I am also a victim,” he said. “Our people need us. They need help.”
Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal.
Houses are partially submerged following a dam collapse in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Tuesday, Sept 10, 2024. (AP Photos/ Musa Ajit Borno)
People walk through floodwaters following a dam collapse in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Tuesday Sept 10, 2024. (AP Photos/ Joshua Olatunji)
