There are 13 undefeated college football teams headed into Week 7 play. Only one unbeaten FBS team is not ranked nationally in the latest Week 7 Top 25 AP poll. The 13 remaining teams now have aspirations of winning a national championship and being one of the four teams or at minimum, competing for a conference championship and receiving an invite to a quality bowl game.
The expectation for these 13 remaining teams is not necessarily is to continue moving up in the future AP poll or to stay or ascend into the top five but to be ranked high once the first College Football Playoff rankings are announced on Nov. 2.
For the fourth straight week, we will examine and look at all of the13 FBS teams that are still undefeated. This week’s undefeated rankings will as it was last week be based on various multiple factors that include but are not limited to victories against Power Five teams, how many wins the teams have earned on the road, their victories against currently ranked opponents, and the teams’ strength of schedules according to teamrankings.com.
We will as we did last week, look at bowl projections by two college football experts from ESPN.
This past week was difficult for some formerly undefeated teams like Alabama, Penn State, and BYU who all lost in week six play. However, the majority of unbeaten teams from Week 6 play either won their game or dominated their opponent to go to 6-0.
There were also a couple of teams that were able to come away with a victory in an impressive upset. Lastly, there were some teams that won by single digits and remained undefeated.
Among the 13 remaining unbeaten teams, we will look at the individual resumes of these 13 teams. Certain teams have some valuable wins while others are simply undefeated with some average to subpar victories over lesser opponents heading into Week 7. Being undefeated is still impressive regardless of who they have and have not beaten this season and having six victories with zero losses is an achievement regardless of how you played at the FBS level.
Let’s now as we have done the previous week, take a closer look at the 13 undefeated teams in these power rankings.
Defeated: at Illinois (37-30), Lamar (54-0), and Middle Tennessee (27-13), at Memphis (31-28), UNLV (24-17), and at Western Kentucky (52-46)
Strength of Schedule: 97th
Road Victories: 3
Wins vs. Power 5 teams: 1
Victories vs. current ranked opponents: 0
Ranked in AP Poll: No
College Bowl Projections: Bonagura: Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl; Schlabach: Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl
Week 6 result: UTSA 52, UNLV 46
Next opponent: Rice
UTSA has done enough to be ranked in the top 25 but is still not as it’s the 29th ranked team in the most recent AP poll if you tally up all of the votes. The Roadrunners are still slotted to participate in the Independence Bowl to face off against BYU but UTSA is not getting anywhere near the same respect as SMU and SDSU are receiving now.
Their win over Illinois does not look as good as it did when it happened but their win on the road at Memphis and even at Western Kentucky are decent victories. The Roadrunners’ margin of victory is not overly but their game at UTEP should be their final hurdle in their quest to go undefeated and capture the Conference USA title.
Week 7 prediction: UTSA 49, Rice 21