Texas is No. 1. The Longhorns earned it in the least comfortable way possible, and that is exactly why the ranking holds up.
The AP Top 25 released Sunday put Texas on top with 56 of 68 first-place votes after the Longhorns beat Ohio State 24-23. What makes that number impressive is how the game went. Texas trailed 20-3 at halftime. Voters did not just reward a win over a great team, they rewarded a team that looked finished and wasn’t.
Seventeen points down at the break against that defense is usually an obituary. Instead Texas came out of the locker room and took the thing back one possession at a time, eventually punching in the go-ahead touchdown from the 1-yard line. That is the kind of afternoon that makes 56 voters stop overthinking it.
The rest of the top 10 held serve
Georgia stayed at No. 2 and Notre Dame stayed at No. 3, which is voters saying they saw no reason to punish anyone. Indiana crept up one to No. 4 and Miami climbed two to No. 5. Ohio State, LSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Alabama fill out the top 10.
Ohio State’s slide to No. 6 is the one worth noting. That is the first time the Buckeyes have been outside the top five in two seasons. They lost by a single point on the road to the team now ranked first, which in a rational world is barely a demotion. But polls are not rational, they are a mood, and the mood said somebody had to move.
One Saturday, total chaos
Oregon is the loudest example. The Ducks fell 15 spots to No. 21, their lowest AP ranking in four years, after losing 39-31 on the road at Oklahoma State. The Cowboys had lost 21 straight games against FBS opponents before that. One afternoon erased a season’s worth of accumulated benefit of the doubt.
Michigan went the other direction. The Wolverines are back in at No. 19 after beating No. 11 Oklahoma 17-10, which is a real win by any standard. It is also a strange one in context, because Michigan had fallen out of the Top 25 entirely the week before after needing an extra second and a second-chance Hail Mary to survive Western Michigan.
Put those two side by side and you have the whole sport in miniature. Michigan looked cooked seven days ago and is now ranked. Oregon looked like a playoff lock and is now closer to unranked than to the top 10. Nothing about either team’s roster changed in a week.
That is the honest read on any September poll. It is a snapshot of what voters watched most recently, weighted heavily toward whatever happened after dinner on Saturday. Ask again in November and half this list will look unrecognizable.
None of which makes Texas a fraud at No. 1. The Longhorns beat the best team on their schedule so far, did it after falling behind by 17, and did it at home in a game that will be on the playoff committee’s whiteboard in December regardless of what happens next. If you are going to hand the top spot to somebody in mid-September, it may as well be the team that just proved it can lose a half and still win the game.
Just don’t get attached. Nobody who has watched this sport for more than one season believes this list survives October intact.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.