Texas Is the New No. 1 After Erasing a 20-Point Deficit Against Ohio State
Texas was down 20 points to Ohio State in Austin on Saturday. By Sunday night the Longhorns were the No. 1 team in the country. That is how fast this sport moves when you produce the right kind of fourth quarter.
Texas scored 21 points in the final period to win 24-23 and climbed from No. 4 to the top of the Week 3 AP Top 25, collecting 56 first-place votes and 1,678 total points. Georgia stayed at No. 2 with three first-place votes, Notre Dame held at No. 3, Indiana moved up to No. 4 and Miami climbed to No. 5.
Ohio State, which came in at No. 1, fell to No. 6. That is a five-spot drop for a one-point road loss, and it leaves the Buckeyes as the highest-ranked one-loss team in the country.
The Comeback Earned This
A 20-point hole against the defending No. 1 team is usually the end of the story. The play calling gets desperate, the crowd goes quiet and everyone starts thinking about next week.
Texas instead put together the single most valuable quarter any team has played this season. Twenty-one unanswered in the fourth against a defense that had controlled the game for three quarters is the kind of result that tells voters everything they need to know about a team’s ceiling and its spine.
Worth noting how rare this perch is for Texas. The Longhorns had not held the AP’s top spot in the regular season since Week 4 of the 2024 season, and they have not been ranked No. 1 this early in a regular season since 1965.
Oregon Is the Week’s Real Disaster
While Texas was climbing, Oregon fell off a cliff. The Ducks dropped 15 spots from No. 6 to No. 21 after a 39-31 loss at Oklahoma State, a team that had lost 21 straight games against FBS opponents before Saturday.
That is the lowest Oregon has been ranked in four years. The only thing keeping the Ducks in the top 25 at all is a season-opening win over Boise State, which is currently receiving votes.
Losing to a team on a 21-game FBS losing streak goes beyond a bad afternoon and forces a full reevaluation of what Oregon actually is. Voters treated it that way.
Michigan fell out of the poll entirely a week ago after needing a Hail Mary to get past Western Michigan. The Wolverines answered with a 17-10 win over then-No. 11 Oklahoma and returned at No. 19.
That is a fast reversal, and it happened because Michigan now owns something very few 2-0 teams have: a win over a ranked opponent. Voters will forgive an ugly September win if you follow it with a quality one.
Oklahoma went the other direction, sliding 13 spots to No. 24. Washington also tumbled out of the rankings entirely after a two-point escape against a Utah State team that had lost to an FCS opponent. The Huskies are now the first team out.
Texas has the target now, and the schedule does not get soft. Three ranked matchups headline this week’s slate, including No. 7 LSU at No. 8 Ole Miss on Saturday night and No. 22 Houston at No. 13 Texas Tech on Friday.
Ohio State, for its part, is in a much better spot than a team that just lost its No. 1 ranking usually is. The Buckeyes lost by a single point on the road to the best team in America. That is a résumé line, not a red flag, and it will matter in December.
For now the Longhorns own the top spot for the first time in nearly two years. They earned it in about fifteen minutes of football.
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.