In Week 7, four different top-10 teams suffered losses to unranked opponents. SMQ delves into how frequently such trends occur in college football history.
There is something about seeing multiple top-10 teams tumble on the same weekend that always seems chaotic. Pollsters in the AP Top 25 and Coaches polls are sent scrambling to reorder the hierarchy of teams. Fans have an urge to declare what they have witnessed as a piece of history.
Week 7 in this year’s college football season offered another window into this phenomenon. First, we saw No. 2 Clemson and No. 8 Washington State fall in back-to-back contests on Friday night. Then Saturday rolled around, and No. 10 Auburn was toppled by LSU. As the day shifted into darkness, No. 5 Washington stumbled in a trap game at Arizona State. By the end of the weekend, four top-10 teams had collapsed against unranked opponents.
Immediately this trend led to some questions. When was the last time that four teams all fell out of the top 10 on the same weekend to unranked challengers? Have five or even six top-10 teams collapsed on the same weekend? Where does this weekend’s chaos rank among the most chaotic weekends of college football history?
And where might we find answers to these questions?
To sort out these questions, this Sunday Morning Quarterback dove into the historical AP Top 25 dat. After compiling annual schedules from Sports Reference for every Top 25 game played since the AP Poll started releasing preseason polls in 1950, we can get a better picture of how frequently this chaos phenomenon occurs.
The data show that this is not such a unique phenomenon as it usually seems in the moment. So without any further introduction, let’s dive in and answer some of these questions in the Week 7 edition of Sunday Morning Quarterback.
(You can find the full dataset for every season from 1950 through the present here. Yellow highlighting indicates a loss by a top-10 team, while orange highlighting indicates a tie by a top-10 team. Feel free to ask more questions or report inaccuracies to the Saturday Morning Quarterback on Twitter at @zbigalke.)
When is the last time four top-10 teams lost to unranked opponents on the same weekend?
You don’t have to go too far back in college football history to find the last time that four top-10 schools fell on the same weekend to unranked foes. It actually happened as recently as a year ago. Back in Week 12 of the 2016 season, we saw a similar level of chaos emerge. Five top-10 teams actually lost that weekend to unranked opponents:
- Pittsburgh 43, No. 2 Clemson 42
- Iowa 14, No. 3 Michigan 13
- USC 26, No. 4 Washington 13
- Georgia 13, No. 8 Auburn 7
- Ole Miss 29, No. 10 Texas A&M 28
Four single-score losses and a two-touchdown upset scrambled the AP Top 25 that weekend. Pittsburgh took down No. 2 Clemson, a result that would have repercussion in the College Football Playoff discussion. While Clemson made it back into the field and ultimately won the national championship, the loss raised serious questions about their worthiness of a spot in the semifinals. This became especially critical in the discussions concerning No. 5 Penn State, which had also fallen to the Panthers earlier in the year.
No. 3 Michigan stumbled by a point against Iowa, while the same happened to No. 10 Texas A&M in their showdown with Ole Miss. The SEC suffered another loss by one of its top-10 teams as No. 8 Auburn collapsed in a 13-7 loss against Georgia. Then there was No. 4 Washington, which took on USC at home and lost 26-13. Like Clemson, the Huskies would eventually make the College Football Playoff field. But the USC loss harmed their case, and only Penn State’s two-loss record opened the door for Washington to reemerge in the race.
How frequently do chaos weekends like this occur in college football?
The phenomenon of top-10 losses to unranked opponents does not usually group together in such dramatic fashion. There are plenty of instances of top-10 teams losing on the same weekend, though usually at least several of those losses come against other ranked squads.
We saw this transpire in 2015, when Week 5 yielded four losses by top-10 teams against lower-ranked or unranked opponents. No. 3 Ole Miss fell against No. 25 Florida 38-10. No. 6 Notre Dame was taken down by No. 12 Clemson. No. 8 Georgia fell by four touchdowns against No. 13 Alabama. Meanwhile, No. 7 UCLA was supplanted by unranked Arizona State 38-23 in Pasadena.
This actually occurred twice in 2015, as Week 13 yielded four more losses by top-10 teams. One of those occurred against a higher-ranked opponent, as No. 9 Oklahoma State crumbled in a 58-23 Bedlam beatdown against No. 5 Oklahoma. No. 15 TCU took out No. 7 Baylor in another Big 12 showdown. On the same weekend, No. 4 Notre Dame was defeated by No. 13 Stanford and No. 10 Florida lost to No. 14 Florida State in a pair of annual rivalry games.
In fact, this has become a regular occurrence in the modern era of college football. The last season to pass without four top-10 teams falling on the same weekend came back in 2005, and several season feature multiple weeks of chaos.
The last time before 2016 that at least four top-10 teams all stumbled against unranked opponents came in 2002. That year, Week 11 saw No. 3 Virginia Tech fall against Pittsburgh, No. 4 Notre Dame collapse against Boston College, No. 5 Georgia stumble against rival Florida, and No. 10 NC State topple to Georgia Tech.
What is the highest number of top-10 teams to fall on the same weekend?
There is only one weekend since 1950 where six top-10 teams tumbled on the same weekend. That level of chaos took place in 1956, when the upset bug struck a half-dozen top teams across the country on October 27.
TCU and Ole Miss, tied at No. 10 in the AP Top 25 entering that week, both lost in shutout fashion to No. 19 Miami and unranked Arkansas respectively. Unranked Illinois took down No. 1 Michigan State in Champaign. The Spartans’ rival in Ann Arbor similarly stumbled, as No. 5 Michigan fell to unranked Minnesota. No. 6 USC fell 27-19 on the road against unranked Stanford. The sixth loss wasn’t as surprising, as No. 7 Texas A&M took out No. 8 Baylor 19-13 in Waco. But it did render the most chaotic weekend in college football history.
Week 5 in 1963 comes in at a close second. Five top-10 teams lost on October 12, 1963, while another sustained a tie against an unranked opponent. No. 3 Alabama fell 10-6 to Florida. Notre Dame dropped No. 7 USC 17-14 in South Bend. SMU knocked off No. 4 Navy in Dallas. Army took out No. 9 Penn State in Happy Valley. And No. 2 Texas crushed No. 1 Oklahoma 28-7 in a lopsided edition of the Red River Shootout. Then there was No. 8 Ohio State, which drew 20-20 against Illinois in an era before overtime.
On no other occasion have six top-10 teams collapsed on the same weekend.
Final Takeaways
Ultimately, our desire to render what we have just witnessed as some quirk of history is really just a recurring phenomenon. Further, though, it is a phenomenon that will continue to sneak up on fans for as long as we continue to watch the sport. The BCS era saw an increased frequency of four or more top-10 teams sustaining losses on the same weekend, and that frequency is unlikely to reduce any time soon.
It will not matter, though. We will always have the tendency to declare the most recent instance of this level of chaos to be a historical level. But there have been even crazier weekends in the past, and we are sure to see even more chaotic weekends in the future. It may take another half-century or more, though, before we see another weekend like the shuffle that occurred in 1956.
A loss is a loss, but they become especially painful when they drop a top-10 team down the polls as though an anchor has been attached to a team. We have an innate desire to explain the losses away as something unique. This is a natural, if inaccurate, impulse that is perfectly human and in line with the vagaries of being a fanatic.
Next: Projected Week 8 College Football AP Poll
We would do well to remember, though, that the pain of defeat and the elation of an upset both subside within the span of a week. More chaos is sure to ensue this year. And, while we are unlikely to see another weekend in 2017 where four top-10 teams all fall to unranked opponents, it would not be entirely out of the realm of possibility for it to happen again.