Miami takes AP No. 1 after 5 top-7 teams fall

It started early, and it started with the SEC's big 3 falling one after another while Indiana was still fighting with Ohio State.

Hold onto that last line about Miami and Notre Dame playing close games, because both of them nearly made it worse. Miami spent its night trying to give one away to an unranked Florida State team and needed 2 overtimes to get out of it.

Chris Vannini

@ChrisVannini

No. 3 Miami hangs on to beat Florida State 43-35 in double OT. That was nuts.

Miami got out. Notre Dame didn't. BYU held on against the Irish in Provo, and there was a late shot to the end zone where plenty of people saw pass interference and the officials didn't. That made 5 of the top 7 losing on the same day. The record was settled before midnight on the East Coast.

Ross Dellenger

@RossDellenger

No. 8 BYU will beat No. 2 Notre Dame in Provo - a massive win for the Big 12 and the *fifth* top-7 ranked team to lose today - an AP poll record. Six FBS teams remain undefeated Miami BYU Texas Tech UCLA James Madison Utah (still playing)

Look at that list of unbeatens again. Miami, BYU, Texas Tech, UCLA, James Madison and Utah. There's no Georgia on it, no Notre Dame, no Indiana, no Alabama and no Texas. UCLA is 6-0 under first-year coach Bob Chesney and is the only unbeaten team left in the Big Ten or SEC. If you had that in August, you're lying.

By Sunday morning the people who run these programs were still trying to explain it. ESPN got a text from a veteran administrator that put the SEC collapse about as cleanly as it can be put.

Pete Thamel

@PeteThamel

Text from a veteran administrator to ESPN this morning, explaining a day of historic upsets: "Two weeks ago Texas, Bama and Georgia were the three best teams in SEC, the conventional wisdom would have suspected that the only losses they might take is when they played one another. Since then they are a combined 1-5, and their only win in that group came because two of them played each other."

Combined 1-5 in 2 weeks is just ugly. Then the poll came out Sunday afternoon and made it official. Miami got 40 first-place votes and moved to No. 1, BYU went to No. 2, Notre Dame dropped to No. 4 and Georgia fell to No. 5. Alabama landed at No. 13 and Texas fell all the way to No. 19.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Miami is ranked No. 1 for the first time since 2002.

On3

@On3

BREAKING: College Football AP Poll🚨 t.co/ruGoooNeKc

Further down the poll, Northwestern got in at No. 24 after barely getting past Michigan State, and the vote total says that ranking undersells them a bit.

Indiana lost and got off pretty easy for it. A 1-spot drop to No. 6 after losing to Ohio State keeps a streak alive that nobody in Bloomington could've imagined a few years ago.

The Playoff projections are where this hits hardest. After 1 Saturday, 2 of the sport's biggest brands are suddenly sweating out the bubble.

Chris Low

@Clowfb

Alabama and Texas among the first four out. Wouldn’t go over well at either locale.

On3

@On3

NEW: College Football Playoff Bracketology via @AndyStaples🏆 Do you agree?🤔 t.co/v8R5D8H1Zn

So this is where it stands at the midpoint: Miami is No. 1 for the first time since 2002, BYU is No. 2 and the old powers are trying to work out what happened. Next up on the calendar is BYU at Utah on Nov. 7 in Salt Lake City, which could be a matchup between 2 unbeatens with a Playoff spot riding on it. Of course, one Saturday just showed how fast all of this can change again.