The top of this week's AP Top 25 is fine. The bottom is a mess, and the people who made it that way are the 69 voters who turned in their ballots after one wild Saturday instead of ranking anybody's actual body of work.
Start with what they got right. Miami at No. 1 for a third straight week is correct. The Hurricanes are 8-0 and had to dig to get past North Carolina 38-35. They needed a lot of nerve to beat an unranked team by three points, but 8-0 is 8-0, and they stay on top. Georgia at No. 2 after taking apart Florida in Atlanta is correct. The unbeaten and one-loss contenders stacked behind them sit in a reasonable order. If the poll ended at No. 16, nobody would have much to yell about.
It doesn't end at No. 16. That's where the voters stopped ranking teams and started rewarding whoever happened to win last weekend.
Seven ranked teams lost in Week 9. Northwestern, SMU, Oklahoma State and Wisconsin dropped out of the poll entirely. Rather than sort through the wreckage and figure out who actually deserved the open chairs, the panel mostly plugged in whoever had a good night. USC and Iowa, both unranked a week ago, pop back in on the strength of a single result. South Carolina, sitting at 5-3, debuts in the back third. It's a scoreboard check from one afternoon.
Then there's Ohio State. The Buckeyes went from No. 2 to No. 11 after their loss to USC, a nine-spot fall that knocked them out of the AP top 10 for the first time since September 26, 2021. One loss. A 6-2 team suddenly sits three spots behind where it should land, while a 5-3 Florida team still holds No. 25 on the reputation of its losses. Reward a two-loss SEC team for losing with dignity and crater a Big Ten team nine spots for losing once, and you're just grading moods.
The team getting squeezed hardest by all this is New Mexico. The Lobos are ranked for the first time in program history, checking in at No. 22 at 7-1, their only loss a 14-6 trip to Oklahoma in Norman. This is a school that has played football since 1892. It's having its first 7-1 start since 1982 under Jason Eck, and it finally cracks the Top 25 after a 21-16 win at San Jose State. That belongs higher than a handful of two-loss teams the voters kept propping up on vibes. A genuinely historic season got parked behind programs with shinier r茅sum茅s and worse records.
The one gripe I won't fully sign off on is Wake Forest at No. 14. The Demon Deacons are 7-1, and their only loss is to Miami, 33-20 back on September 18, when Miami was ranked fifth, not first. Hindsight makes that loss look better than it did at the time. But voters watch recent film, and if a team's last few weeks looked shaky, voters are right to dock it. That's just the job, done honestly. The real problem is everything happening around Wake Forest.
With the first College Football Playoff rankings due Tuesday night, this poll is the warmup act, and warmup acts are supposed to be reliable. This one just tells you who had a good Saturday.
