College Football 2020: Winners, losers from Week 9 AP Poll release

College football’s Week 9 AP Poll is out and it showed that there are two new Big Ten contenders and a clear favorite in the Big 12.

Week 8 was the one that all of college football was anxiously awaiting as the Big Ten joined the party and made the playoff race that much more interesting.

Ohio State still looks like the team to beat in the conference, Wisconsin and Michigan look like contenders and Minnesota was exposed as a pretender. Penn State and Indiana played in the most exciting game of the season to date and it ended with the Hoosiers earning their biggest win in decades. Penn State might have a long season ahead of it with games against Ohio State and Michigan looming.

The Week 9 AP Poll was friendly to the Big Ten.

Oklahoma State had a big game against Iowa State this weekend and the Cowboys passed the test and earned the status of team to beat in the Big 12. The Cowboys are the lone hope for the conference to earn a playoff bid and everyone will be watching with interest to see how they play the rest of the season.

Virginia Tech and Iowa State are two teams that will find it hard pressed to get back in their conference races after the weeks that they just had. Iowa State’s passing attack could not get it going against Oklahoma State and lost an opportunity to establish themselves as front runners in the Big 12. Virginia Tech dropped a game to Wake Forest and showed that they were more pretender than contender.

Outside of the Power Five, Cincinnati proved that they are clearly the team to beat in the AAC and in the Group of Five. The Bearcats had a dominant victory over SMU and showed that they might be a dark-horse contender for the playoff if things fell their way.

BYU continued to look dominant as it dismantled Texas State on Saturday and Cougars quarterback Zach Wilson might be a Heisman contender.

Here are the winners and losers from the Week 9 AP Poll release.