A wild Saturday didn’t just shake up the standings - it blew the doors off Ohio State’s place in the race and opened the lane for Utah to move up. In my latest AP Top 25 poll after Week 9, the Buckeyes slid all the way to No. 15 while the Utes climbed into the top five after another convincing win.
My AP Top 25 poll after Week 9
Georgia, 2. Utah, 3.
Miami, 4. Notre Dame, 5.
Ole Miss, 6. Alabama, 7.
Texas, 8. UCLA, 9.
LSU, 10. Texas Tech, 11.
BYU, 12. Indiana, 13.
Tennessee, 14. Houston, 15.
Ohio State, 16. Kentucky, 17.
Missouri, 18. Wake Forest, 19.
South Carolina, 20. Arizona, 21.
Florida, 22. Iowa, 23.
Southern Cal, 24. Northwestern, 25.
Boise State
Just missed: Louisville, Oklahoma State, Oregon and SMU
Newcomers: South Carolina, Iowa, USC and Boise State
Dropped from last week: Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, Cincinnati and SMU
Ohio State’s fall is the biggest story here. Last week, I was willing to give the Buckeyes a pass because of the injury to quarterback Julian Sayin, since Luke Fahey had barely played.
That courtesy is gone now. After seeing Fahey handle a full game, it’s clear this is a different Ohio State team.
The Buckeyes didn’t reach the end zone until late in the fourth quarter against a USC defense that hasn’t stopped much of anybody this season. Even the Ohio State defense had trouble keeping the Trojans from hitting big plays, and that came a week after Wisconsin had already shut down USC’s offense.
That loss made the picture plain: this version of Ohio State is not a top-five team anymore. With Sayin out for the year, the Buckeyes now look like a team on the edge of the College Football Playoff picture rather than one sitting near the top of it.
Utah took Ohio State’s old spot in the top five after hammering Cincinnati on the road. The Utes scored in just about every way possible, finding the end zone through the air, on the ground, on a fumble recovery and on an interception return.
Cincinnati may not be a national title team, but it’s not a pushover either. I had the Bearcats in the poll last week after they beat up Texas Tech, so this was a real statement from Utah.
That followed last week’s win over Houston, which makes the Utes’ top-five case even stronger. They’re still undefeated, and the résumé is starting to speak loudly.
I’m still not sold that Utah is a true national championship contender - the offense had enough uneven stretches against Houston to leave questions about how it would look against Miami, Notre Dame or the best SEC teams - but the body of work is more than enough for this ranking. And after Miami’s three-point win over North Carolina and Notre Dame’s shaky half against Navy, nobody at the top looked untouchable anyway.
BYU and Indiana both won, but neither got much credit from me.
BYU’s latest escape was ugly. The Cougars barely got past Arizona State at home, and the Sun Devils were down to their third quarterback.
Jake Fette isn’t a disaster, but a freshman quarterback shouldn’t be pushing BYU that close in Provo. The game could have been even tighter if not for another major goal-line mistake by the Big 12 referees.
When you add that to last week’s loss to UCF - the same UCF team that was blown out at home Friday by Baylor, which fired its coach last week - the Cougars’ profile gets messy fast. They still have the Notre Dame and Arizona wins, but they also have one of the worst losses of the season and a couple of shaky finishes against lesser teams like Arizona State and TCU.
I gave BYU some benefit of the doubt after the UCF loss. The Arizona State game made me rethink that.
Indiana is living on the edge, too. The Hoosiers needed a 60-yard field goal in the final seconds just to force overtime against Minnesota at home, then finished the job in the extra period.
That’s only the latest in a long line of close calls. They needed overtime to beat Michigan last week, rallied hard to get past Nebraska, and only beat Northwestern by a touchdown.
Their only loss came against Ohio State at home, with Sayin available for most of the game, but the results still don’t match the top-10 ranking. The record says one thing.
The performances say something else. It’s time to stop acting like this is still 2025.
South Carolina is in the poll, and deservedly so. The Gamecocks have two wins over teams ranked in my top 21, and over the last three weeks they’ve looked like a top-10 outfit.
Yes, they’ve got three losses, but two came against ranked teams, and the other - Mississippi State - was also a Top 25-caliber opponent when its quarterback was healthy. They lost to Mississippi State by a touchdown and fell to Kentucky on a two-point conversion.
That’s a solid enough résumé, and with the Gamecocks rising into the top 25 of ESPN’s SP+ metric, they’re a team worth taking seriously in the final month of the season.
Texas Tech jumped right back into the top 10 with its win over Arizona. I’m not a fan of Thomas Castellanos, but the quarterback change worked, and the Red Raiders got what they wanted on the ground against a solid Arizona defense. The loss to Cincinnati looks more and more like the outlier, especially with the Houston win still on the ledger.
Florida stayed in the rankings despite the loss to Georgia. The Gators’ résumé is still strong enough to keep them in, with two top-10 wins and losses only to ranked teams, even if some of those defeats have been rough to watch.
And at the very top, Georgia stays No. 1.
The deeper we get into the season, the more the Auburn loss looks like a fluke. Between the dominant win over Florida and the road victory at Alabama, the Bulldogs have the best mix of résumé and eye test through nine weeks.
Kirby Smart’s team has earned the spot.
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