It was historic, no question. For the first time since the AP poll began in 1936, five of the top seven teams lost on the same day: No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Notre Dame, No. 5 Indiana, No. 6 Alabama and No. 7 Texas. That's the number. Now throw out the word everybody's reaching for.
Chaos is the lazy way to describe this Saturday, and poll voters are going to hide behind it. Chaos means nobody's at fault, means you shrug and bump everyone down a line together. These five losses aren't equal, and the day's most famous survivor shouldn't have survived at all.
Start there, because it's the part the record book will never show. No. 3 Miami beat Florida State 43-35 in double overtime in a finish the officials decided, including a Hail Mary ruled an interception. Mike Norvell walked off having watched the game slip through the stripes. Count it honestly and six top-seven teams went down that Saturday. The AP's five-team headline only holds because the crew in Miami kept one unbeaten team standing. If you're going to call this the most chaotic day ever, charge Miami the asterisk it earned.
Now sort the rest. The quality of these losses ranges from understandable to disgraceful.
Georgia is the disgrace. The No. 1 team in the country lost at home, 27-24, to unranked Auburn and Alex Golesh, as a favorite of a touchdown or more. Alabama and Texas went down as touchdown-or-more favorites too, three of the SEC's supposed heavyweights laying eggs they were paid to avoid. Georgia and Texas became the first No. 1 teams to lose on the last play in back-to-back weeks. Nobody did that to Kirby Smart. He did it to himself, at home, with the whole sport watching. Blaming a crazy day lets the people who actually lost these games walk away clean, and they shouldn't get to.
Contrast that with Notre Dame, and the gap is the whole argument. The Irish lost 28-24 on the road at No. 8 BYU, a top-ten opponent that didn't even have its reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year available. Notre Dame lost star defender Boubacar Traore to an early ejection, which gutted the pass rush, then squandered a late chance to steal the game back. That's a legitimate defeat to a good team in a hard building, and it ended a 16-game win streak. BYU fans stormed the field because they beat somebody real. That result belongs in a different category than Georgia's.
Indiana belongs in that better category too. The Hoosiers lost 19-15 to No. 4 Ohio State in Bloomington, Curt Cignetti's first home loss in three seasons and the first top-five game Memorial Stadium has ever hosted. Ohio State paid for it, losing quarterback Julian Sayin to an arm injury for weeks. Losing a rock fight to the No. 4 team while handing them your best shot is nothing like getting favored by a touchdown and falling to an unranked team at home.
This is where voters earn their keep or embarrass themselves. If the new poll just slides all five teams down a notch and treats a home loss to unranked Auburn the same as a road loss at No. 8 BYU, they've learned nothing. A resume is built on who you lost to and where. Georgia and Texas torched theirs. Notre Dame and Indiana lost games any good team can lose. Reward the difference, and give BYU the ranking it just earned in person.
The day was real history. What voters do with it next will decide whether the sport is honest about it, instead of laundering a home no-show into bad luck just because it happened on a busy afternoon.
