Historic Upsets Throw College Football Rankings Open

Five of the Associated Press Top 25’s top seven teams lost on the same regular-season day for the first time since the poll began in 1936. Eight ranked teams fell overall. The results shook up the rankings and College Football Playoff picture, while next season’s planned expansion to 24 teams has raised new questions about how much the regular season will matter.

Rankings Shaken

No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Notre Dame, No. 5 Indiana, No. 6 Alabama and No. 7 Texas all lost. The top two teams hadn’t both fallen on the same regular-season day since 2012. No. 3 Miami stayed unbeaten, beating rival Florida State 43-35 in double overtime. The 6-0 team now has a chance to claim the AP poll’s top spot for the first time since 2002.

No. 4 Ohio State beat Indiana 19-15, ending Indiana’s 22-game winning streak. No. 8 BYU defeated Notre Dame 28-24, and No. 9 Mississippi routed No. 13 Missouri 31-3. No. 10 Texas Tech beat Arizona State 53-25; No. 11 Utah held off Colorado 27-24. The AP report said Georgia, Notre Dame and Indiana could fall after close defeats. Alabama and Texas each had two losses. No. 14 Tennessee, meanwhile, was positioned to rise after beating Alabama 26-10.

A 34-yard field goal from Alex McPherson gave Auburn a 27-24 win at Georgia. Auburn, unranked at the time, beat a No. 1 team on the road for the first time since 2007, according to the Fox report. Georgia had won 53 straight games against unranked opponents. The teams were tied 24-24 with 58 seconds left. Auburn drove 40 yards, aided by a Georgia penalty, before McPherson made the winning kick.

Close Calls and Officiating

BYU’s win over Notre Dame ended with a disputed play. With one second remaining, Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr threw toward the end zone. BYU deflected the pass, which fell incomplete. The Athletic said BYU should have been flagged for pass interference. The Big 12 later said one more second should have remained on the clock and announced a review of its end-of-game officiating process.

The conference said: "Following the Big 12's review of the final play of Saturday's Notre Dame-BYU game, it was determined that time remained on the clock when the ball hit the ground and the play was incorrectly cleared by the replay officiating crew. The Conference will conduct a complete review of its end-of-game officiating process in advance of next week's games." Fox reported that the ruling would have given Notre Dame one final play from the BYU 8-yard line. Thousands of fans rushed the field after the game.

Miami needed extra time, too, beating Florida State in a game played on Oct. 17, 2026, according to Fox. In the second overtime, a holding penalty erased a Florida State Hail Mary touchdown. Miami had nearly given up another Hail Mary on fourth-and-31.

Playoff Stakes

The Athletic reported that the SEC had no unbeaten teams in conference play and that 11 SEC teams had one or two losses. The SEC went 38-2 in nonconference play, including 10-2 against other power conferences. This season, the conference played a nine-game schedule for the first time.

The Athletic noted that no 9-3 team had ever reached the 12-team College Football Playoff as an at-large selection, and said the losses could cost the SEC playoff places. Fox reported that a 24-team playoff expansion the following season had been agreed to before the weekend. Teams had spent more than $35 million to assemble rosters, and the article discussed parity in the NIL-revenue-sharing era. The SEC championship game, playoff places and season outcomes remained unresolved.