Read the latest AP Top 25 rankings.
Before the first College Football Playoff rankings are released Tuesday, there’s a lot to discuss about the AP Top 25 heading into November. From a tie for No. 2 to a top-two Tennessee-Georgia matchup to Oregon State ending a long drought, let’s dive into this week’s AP rankings, my ballot and the context for both.
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1. A lot will be made of who’s No. 1 this week, in both the AP poll and the College Football Playoff rankings. It’s a fun and interesting debate, even if it will quickly be rendered moot. Georgia and Tennessee will meet on Saturday, and the winner is almost certain to be ranked No. 1 in both sets of rankings next week.
For now, my ballot held steady. I kept Ohio State first, Georgia second and Tennessee third, choosing to let the Bulldogs-Vols game play out before presumably vaulting the winner to the top of my rankings. Georgia’s No. 1 vote share fell from 31 to 30 this week, Ohio State’s fell from 18 to 15 and Tennessee’s rose from 13 to 18. Clemson no longer received a No. 1 vote.
Georgia has the most impressive win in beating Oregon by 46, and Tennessee has the best collection of wins, especially after dismantling Kentucky. I still feel Ohio State’s variety of top-tier talent — from C.J. Stroud to Marvin Harrison Jr. to Emeka Egbuka to TreVeyon Henderson to J.T. Tuimoloau — makes it the team with the highest ceiling when it’s playing its best football, but the winner in Athens will be hard to deny the No. 1 spot … at least until we see what happens between Ohio State and Michigan on Nov. 26.
Further intrigue comes from the question of who’s No. 2, especially because of a rare quirk in the AP poll on Sunday: Ohio State and Tennessee are tied at 1,500 voting points each. It’s the first time since November 2004 (Oklahoma and Auburn) that two teams are tied for No. 2, and it means that Georgia-Tennessee technically gets elevated to AP No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup status.
| Team | AP | My Ballot |
|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | |
2 | 1 | |
2 | 3 | |
4 | 4 | |
5 | 5 | |
6 | 7 | |
7 | 6 | |
8 | 8 | |
9 | 11 | |
10 | 9 | |
11 | 13 | |
12 | 10 | |
13 | 14 | |
14 | 15 | |
15 | 12 | |
16 | 17 | |
17 | 16 | |
18 | 18 | |
19 | 20 | |
20 | 19 | |
21 | 23 | |
22 | 21 | |
23 | 25 | |
24 | 22 | |
25 | NR | |
NR | 24 |
2. Three teams may be ranked in the top two, but No. 2 Tennessee at No. 1 Georgia still counts as the 25th top-two matchup during the regular season in AP poll history. It’s something that has happened only four other times in the past 25 years:
- 2019: No. 1 LSU 46, No. 2 Alabama 41
- 2011: No. 1 LSU 9, No. 2 Alabama 6
- 2006: No. 1 Ohio State 42, No. 2 Michigan 39
- 2006: No. 1 Ohio State 24, No. 2 Texas 7
Neither Georgia nor Tennessee has played in a matchup of top-two teams in the regular season, and this will be the first time the Vols and Bulldogs meet each other while both are ranked in the AP top five. It’s the fifth time they’ll have a top-10 matchup, with the previous four all taking place from 1998 to 2005. And it’s the first time Tennessee is playing in a game with two AP top-five teams since its December 2001 win at Florida.
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3. The 24 AP top-two matchups in the regular season have produced 22 winners, given that Notre Dame and Michigan State tied in 1966 and Notre Dame and Army tied in 1946. In both cases, Notre Dame went on to be voted No. 1 in the final rankings.
Eleven winners went on to win the AP national championship. Three of the losers (2011 Alabama, 1996 Florida and 1993 Florida State) actually went on to finish No. 1, one spot ahead of the teams that beat them in the regular season (two thanks to bowl rematches). The only teams that won a top-two matchup in the regular season and failed to finish in the top three were 1968 Purdue, 1981 USC and 1985 Iowa.
| Year | Winner | Final Rk | Loser | Final Rk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2019 | 1 | Alabama | 8 | |
2011 | 2 | Alabama | 1 | |
2006 | 2 | Michigan | 8 | |
2006 | 2 | Texas | 13 | |
1996 | 3 | Florida | 1 | |
1993 | 2 | Florida State | 1 | |
1991 | 1 | Florida State | 4 | |
1989 | 2 | Michigan | 7 | |
1988 | 1 | USC | 7 | |
1987 | 3 | Nebraska | 6 | |
1986 | 2 | Oklahoma | 3 | |
1985 | 10 | Michigan | 2 | |
1981 | 14 | Oklahoma | 20 | |
1971 | 1 | Oklahoma | 2 | |
1969 | 1 | Arkansas | 7 | |
1968 | 10 | Notre Dame | 5 | |
1966 | 1 | Michigan State (tie) | 2 | |
1963 | 1 | Oklahoma | 10 | |
1946 | 1 | Army (tie) | 2 | |
1945 | 1 | Navy | 3 | |
1945 | 1 | Notre Dame | 9 | |
1944 | 1 | Navy | 4 | |
1943 | 1 | Iowa Pre-Flight | 2 | |
1943 | 1 | Michigan | 3 |
4. The AP poll is now just an appetizer for the main course of the College Football Playoff rankings. People have long argued that the AP poll influences the CFP, but that’s not necessarily true. The CFP has a relatively consistent process from year to year that typically cites the same criteria (wins vs. Top 25, wins vs. teams with .500 or better records, etc.) So how do the sets of rankings typically compare?
I went deep on the subject in advance of the first CFP rankings last year. The AP top four before the first 2021 CFP rankings featured Georgia, Cincinnati, Alabama and Oklahoma, while the CFP’s initial top four had only two of the same teams: Georgia, Alabama, Michigan State and Oregon. Three of the AP’s top four went on to make the Playoff.
Only twice (2018 and 2020) in eight seasons have the AP poll and the initial CFP rankings agreed on the top four teams, in any order.
The CFP and AP No. 1s have been the same in five of eight years, but it feels like they could disagree this year. Given the committee’s tendency to emphasize quality wins, Tennessee beating Alabama, LSU and Kentucky has a chance to outweigh Georgia’s win against Oregon. Regardless, it seems like a good bet the CFP will agree that Tennessee-Georgia is a matchup of the top two teams, in either order.
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Looking forward, in eight years of the system, 21 of 32 CFP participants were in the AP top four at the time of the initial selection committee rankings. Nobody has made the CFP from outside the AP top nine at the time of the initial CFP rankings since Oklahoma in 2015.
Recent history is on Georgia’s side, as the AP No. 1 at this point has made the Playoff in six consecutive seasons after missing out the first two years (Mississippi State in 2014, Ohio State in 2015).
5. It’s time for my quick annual defense of the continued existence of the AP poll before the College Football Playoff rankings take over for the rest of the regular season.
No, the AP poll doesn’t take the lead in crowning the national champion anymore. The CFP rankings are what matters in that regard. Still, the AP rankings exist as an 87-year poll of record capable of providing historical context for every team. At any point, you can look to AP rankings as a guide for how good teams were (or at least how they were perceived), and they also still provide something the CFP doesn’t: a full final Top 25 after the season.
In a sport where only a handful of teams are capable of winning the national title, getting into the poll or climbing into the top 10 still serves a purpose as a benchmark for teams that have differing goals.
6. Tennessee-Georgia has stolen the early-November thunder that typically belongs to Alabama-LSU. Alabama-LSU is still a big game, though, with SEC West title implications. The Crimson Tide are ranked No. 6, while the Tigers are No. 15. And I’m even higher on LSU, placing it ahead of Ole Miss at No. 12 on my ballot thanks to a blowout win against the Rebels.
It marks the 20th time in the past 50 seasons that Alabama-LSU is a top-15 matchup, one behind Florida State-Miami for the most in that span dating back to 1973. Ohio State-Michigan is likely to climb to 21 next month, while Oklahoma and Texas have also had 20 such games.
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7. The Pac-12 has three teams ranked in the top 10: No. 8 Oregon, No. 9 USC and No. 10 UCLA. (Utah is just outside at No. 12.) It’s the first time since Nov. 27, 2016, that the Pac-12 has three top-10 teams in the same AP poll. The 2016 crop included No. 4 Washington, No. 9 Colorado and No. 10 USC.
I did a lot of shuffling on my ballot starting with No. 10 this week as I hit reset in examining resumes and comparing teams. I decided to bump Utah to No. 10, ahead of USC, which it beat. The Utes have two losses, but the only team with a winning record the Trojans have beaten is Oregon State. I leaned on head-to-head in favor of Utah, though the gap between the top four in the Pac-12 is minimal and subject to change on a week-to-week basis.
8. Saturday was the third time two AP top-10 teams lost by 27-plus points to teams not ranked in the top 10 on the same day. No. 22 Kansas State pitched a stunning 48-0 shutout of No. 9 Oklahoma State, and No. 10 Wake Forest committed eight turnovers in a 48-21 loss to Louisville.
The only other times that happened: On Oct. 3, 2015, No. 13 Alabama beat No. 8 Georgia 38-10 and No. 25 Florida beat No. 3 Ole Miss 38-10. On Nov. 14, 1953, Wisconsin beat No. 3 Illinois 34-7 and Houston beat No. 9 Baylor 37-7.
These are the type of results that make so much of this week’s poll a jumbled mess outside the top 10. Wake Forest is now 0-2 all time when ranked in the top 10, losing to North Carolina last year and Louisville this year. And Kansas State’s win was so emphatic that I broke it free from the head-to-head pairing with Tulane because its resume is strong enough to exist on a tier ahead of the Green Wave again. I moved the Wildcats up to No. 14, one spot behind their poll ranking.
Kansas State 48, Oklahoma State 0 was:
-KSU's largest win vs. top 10 team
-KSU's largest win vs. ranked team since 2002
-KSU's largest Big 12 win since 2010
-OK State's first shutout loss since 2009
-OK State's worst loss/shutout loss since 2000— Matt Brown (@MattBrownCFB) October 30, 2022
9. Oregon State didn’t play this week, but it was one of the biggest winners. Thanks to losses by Kentucky, Cincinnati and South Carolina, the idle Beavers entered the poll at No. 24 with a 6-2 record that includes losses to No. 9 USC and No. 12 Utah.
It marks Oregon State’s first time ranked since the 2013 preseason, ending the second-longest active Power 5 drought. Kansas and Illinois ended even longer droughts already this year. Rutgers, which was last ranked in November 2012, has gone the longest without a poll appearance.
| Team | Last time ranked |
|---|---|
Nov. 18, 2012 | |
Jan. 7, 2014 | |
Sept. 20, 2015 | |
Oct. 29, 2017 | |
Sept. 23, 2018 | |
Sept. 23, 2018 | |
Nov. 11, 2018 | |
Jan. 8, 2019 | |
Sept. 3, 2019 | |
Sept. 3, 2019 |
10. Some weeks, I want to vote for 30 teams. Others, I wish I could vote for fewer than 25. This week falls into the latter category. Maryland, Washington and UCF all have cases for a spot at 6-2, but they lack quality wins (especially Maryland and Washington) and/or have a rough loss (Washington to Arizona State, UCF by 21 to East Carolina last week).
I reluctantly moved NC State back in — it has lost only to ranked teams and at least beat Florida State and Texas Tech — and also gave a spot to Texas as the top three-loss team. Why? The Longhorns’ three losses came by a total of 11 points, and I leaned on advanced metrics to help break a tie between a whole bunch of teams I didn’t feel confident ranking. Rating systems like ESPN’s SP+ and Sagarin indicate Texas is better than its record, so I’ll go with the Longhorns for now. The poll settled on UCF, which I won’t necessarily argue against, either. I had the Knights as my top-ranked Group of 5 team heading into the season.
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New poll arrivals: Oregon State (22), NC State (23) and Texas (24) are new to my ballot. Liberty (23), Oregon State (24) and UCF (25) are new to the AP Top 25.
Falling out: South Carolina (19), Kentucky (20) and Cincinnati (24) fell off my ballot. Kentucky (19), Cincinnati (20) and South Carolina (25) are new to the AP Top 25.
Who I like more than the rest of the panel (difference of three-plus spots): LSU (No. 12 on my ballot vs. No. 15 in the poll), Texas (No. 24 vs. unranked)
Who I like less: Ole Miss (No. 13 vs. No. 10), UCF (unranked vs. No. 25)
Week 10 ranked matchups: No. 2 Tennessee at No. 1 Georgia, No. 6 Alabama at No. 15 LSU, No. 20 Wake Forest at No. 21 NC State
(Top photo of Jabari Small: Bryan Lynn / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
