College Football Rankings 2018: Winners, Losers from Week 9 AP Top 25

With five of the top 11 teams on bye weeks and several matchups featuring ranked opponents, who were the biggest Week 9 winners and losers in the AP Top 25?

With the College Football Playoff selection committee set to release their first Top 25 rankings of the season on Tuesday, October 30, many fans are turning their attention toward that list. But whether the committee likes to admit it or not, their selectors are indeed influenced in subtle ways by the polls that come before them.

Preeminent among them is the AP Top 25, the arbiter of college football’s hierarchy since 1936. The poll doesn’t always get it right, as we have seen over the decades, but their weekly rankings set the benchmark of how programs are perceived in a given season.

That’s why teams are always striving to make a good impression for pollsters, and why a resounding defeat can have such a ripple effect in the polls. The Top 25 is a fluid document, ever-changing with each new result.

And teams certainly did their best to cause shifts in the AP Top 25 this week. Even though five of the top 11 teams were sitting out on byes, multiple teams dropped out of the rankings this week after suffering big losses. Others made big jumps up, even when they weren’t playing.

In total, seven new teams climbed up into the AP Top 25 this week. That included Houston, which launched up to No. 17 with their takedown of South Florida, and Utah State entering at No. 18 after a 61-19 beatdown of New Mexico. Fresno State made it four Group of Five teams on the list when they came in at No. 20.

Who, though, enjoyed the biggest rise this week? Who suffered the biggest fall? Keep reading for the winners and losers in the Week 9 edition of the AP Top 25.