We entered Week 6 with 17 undefeated teams remaining. That number dropped to 13 after four teams suffered their first loss of the 2021 season.
College football is a sport where each data point carries outsized power in determining where teams fall in the pecking order. A program’s conference affiliation obviously carries massive impact in shaping the significance of those data points within the broader national narrative. The biggest dividing line in any season, though, is between those teams still clinging to undefeated dreams and those who just suffered their first loss of the year.
This week continued a chaotic trend that began percolating in late August and continues to shape the discourse. Alabama fell to Texas A&M 41-38 on a walk-off Seth Small field goal at Kyle Field, suffering not only its first loss of 2021 but also the team’s first loss against an unranked opponent since Nick Saban’s first season in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide defeat also means that all four of last season’s College Football Playoff participants—Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Notre Dame—sport blemished records in early October.
Three other formerly undefeated teams sustained a first loss over the weekend. In their top-five matchup, either Iowa or Penn State was destined to take an L now that we are 25 years removed from the introduction of overtime rules and the end of ties in college football. After Sean Clifford exited the game with an injury, the Nittany Lions shed a lead and conceded to the Hawkeyes in a 23-20 Big Ten thriller. BYU invited Boise State to Provo and summarily laid down in a 26-17 collapse. And Wyoming, the lone Mountain West team clinging to undefeated status by tenuous threads through the first month of the year, finally fell at Air Force.
For these four teams, defeat will have very different impacts. A loss in October doesn’t automatically spell doom, anymore than a loss in September can’t be overcome. (Once we get into November, it becomes an entirely different story largely because there are so few data points to restore a positive impression on the College Football Playoff selection committee and the voters in other polls.)
Taking that into account, let’s walk through these four losses and see what impact it will have—on the losing team, on the conference in which they play, and on the sport more broadly—in this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback.