CFB · RANKINGS · AP-TOP-25 · QUADS · POLL-REACTION · TENNESSEE
The AP Put Tennessee in the Top 10 and Our Résumé Ranking Has Them 18th
By MVPeav · @MVPeav ·
Tennessee beat Kentucky 34-6 on Saturday and the AP voters sent them up seven spots to No. 9. First time in the top 10 for the Vols since the end of 2024.
Our résumé ranking, Quads, has Tennessee 18th. Nine spots is the widest gap between the two lists this week, and nothing else is close.
Most of the rest of the poll held up. The voters got the big weekend moves right and then, up top, ranked a few teams on how they looked rather than what they've won. Let's go through it, including the spots where our own list owes an explanation.
How Quads Ranks Teams Before We Argue
Quads works like the NET quadrants in college basketball. Every game gets sorted Q1 through Q4 by how strong the opponent is and where it was played, so a road win over a top-10 team lands in a different bucket than a home win over a team ranked 100th.
Then it adds up what you did in each bucket. Margin doesn't count. Head-to-head doesn't count. How a team looks on a Saturday night doesn't count. It grades what a team has done, so a loss to a great team costs almost nothing and a loss to a bad one costs plenty.
Which means the list gets weird in a few known places, and I'd rather name them now. Georgia (ours 7th) and Tennessee (ours 18th) both beat Alabama (ours 3rd) and sit below them. Notre Dame (9th) beat Miami (6th). Tennessee (18th) beat Kentucky (8th). Oregon (12th) lost to Oklahoma State (38th) and Illinois (39th), and all three are 6-3.
Those are the limits of a résumé lens. Keep them in mind, because they cut both ways below.
The Voters Got the Big Moves Right
Start with the credit. Miami went from No. 1 to No. 5 after losing 31-24 at Notre Dame, and a four-spot drop for an 8-1 team that lost on the road to a top-five opponent is about right. Quads has Miami 6th, one spot off the AP.
Ohio State fell ten spots to No. 21 after Oregon came into Columbus, fell behind 14-0, and then scored 38 straight. A fake punt flipped the game. Luke Fahey went 36-of-50 for 360 yards in his second start since Julian Sayin got hurt, and the Buckeyes still lost 41-28 at home.
That's a 6-3 team now with losses at Texas, at USC and to Oregon, and Quads has them 19th. Two spots apart. The voters didn't flinch, and they didn't need to.
Oregon came back into the poll at No. 18. Quads has the Ducks 12th, because a Q1 road win at Ohio State is as good as a single result gets and they're 2-1 in that bucket. More on their three losses later, since one of them is a problem for us.
Utah at No. 2 and UCLA at No. 4 both fit. Utah is 9-0 and beat BYU 28-20 at home; Quads has them 1st. UCLA is 9-0 with wins at Oregon (17-15) and, this weekend, at Minnesota (34-20); Quads has them 2nd. Two unbeaten teams with wins the résumé respects, and the voters have them in the top four. No fight there.
Tennessee at No. 9 Is the Biggest Reach
Now the Vols. The Kentucky game was a beatdown. Eight tackles for loss, three turnovers forced, and Kentucky got into the red zone twice and came out with two field goals. If you want a performance to point at, you've got one.
But a seven-spot jump into the top 10 is a ranking of the performance, and Quads ranks the résumé. Tennessee is 7-2. The losses are 17-20 to Texas (SP+ No. 8) and 24-27 at South Carolina (SP+ No. 28), and they're 1-1 in Q1 games. The best win is Alabama, 26-10 at home, and the second-best is Saturday.
The friendliest of our three Quads versions has them 15th. The other two say 19th. None of them get anywhere near the top 10, because a two-loss team with one Q1 win hasn't done top-10 work yet, however good the tape looks.
The résumé does have an answer, and it's a loud one. Tennessee beat Alabama, and Quads has Alabama 3rd. If head-to-head decided this, the Vols would be top five and we'd be the ones explaining. Quads doesn't use it, and this is exactly the game where that stings.
So read it as a disagreement about what a ranking is for. The voters saw a team playing like a top-10 team and ranked it there. Quads sees two losses, one of them at SP+ No. 28, and says prove it. The first CFP rankings had them 13th, and the next game is on the road at Texas A&M, which is a chance to make this whole argument go away.
Georgia and Notre Dame Got Ranked on the Eye Test
Georgia at No. 1 with 53 first-place votes, up from 2 a week ago, is the week's purest eye-test ranking. And the eye had a point. Georgia went to Oxford, led 28-0 at halftime, ran for 295 yards and won 42-7. Stockton went 9-of-15 for 186 and 4 touchdowns. Ole Miss's 16-game home winning streak is over.
Quads has Georgia 7th in all three versions. One game does it, a 24-27 home loss to Auburn (SP+ No. 51) that lands in Q3. The wins at Alabama (20-17) and at Ole Miss (42-7) are both Q1, and 2-0 in Q1 is as good as anyone up top. A Q3 home loss is the most expensive thing a résumé can carry in this system, and Georgia is carrying one.
Notre Dame is the same conversation at No. 3. The Miami win was legit. They led 24-3 early in the second half, CJ Carr went 29-of-40 for 319 yards and 3 touchdowns, and a late Miami fourth-down throw got knocked away. Nobody's arguing the result.
Quads has the Irish 9th, three spots behind the Miami team they just beat. The lone loss is 24-28 at BYU (SP+ No. 13), they're 1-1 in Q1, and an 8-1 with one Q1 win sits behind a few teams with more.
Both teams have a case against our lens. Georgia beat Alabama, who Quads has 3rd. Notre Dame beat Miami, who Quads has 6th. A résumé system that puts you behind the team you beat on the field is telling you something about the system as much as the team. The voters used head-to-head and the eye, Quads used neither, and on these two the AP's version will feel more right to most people. I don't think it makes a Q3 loss disappear, but it's a judgment call, and I'll call it one.
Cupcake Bumps and a Kentucky Overcorrection
Wake Forest moved up three spots to No. 11 for beating Merrimack, an FCS team, 77-0. 77-0 is fun. It's also worth nothing on a résumé, and the Deacons are SP+ No. 26, so an 8-1 built on their schedule gets them 13th in Quads, which is about where the AP had them before they ever took the field Saturday.
Houston went up three to No. 14 after beating Cincinnati (SP+ No. 49) 31-24, a Q3 win. Boise State went up three to No. 17 after a 64-38 win at Colorado State, SP+ No. 103, which is Q4. Three teams climbed three spots each for wins that moved their résumés about an inch. The poll had room because teams above them lost, and that's fine, but none of the three earned it Saturday.
Then Kentucky, which dropped five spots to No. 13 for losing at Tennessee. Quads has the Wildcats 8th, five spots above the AP and ten above the team that just beat them 34-6. The 35-34 win over LSU, SP+ No. 3, is doing the heavy lifting, and a win over the No. 3 team in SP+ is a bigger résumé line than almost anything the teams around them can show.
Quads doesn't see margin, though, and Kentucky's two losses are 6-34 at Tennessee and 17-45 to Alabama. Those are 7-2 scores from a team that got run off the field twice by its own conference. The voters saw the 6 and the 17 and moved. Quads saw two losses to good teams and shrugged. Five spots for one loss still reads like an overcorrection to me, but I understand the instinct.
Where Our List Fights Theirs
Four teams Quads likes more than the voters do, and two it ranks that the AP won't touch.
Alabama is AP No. 7 and Quads 3rd, and it gets its own section below. Kentucky, covered above, is 13 vs 8.
Iowa went up five to No. 16, and Quads has the Hawkeyes 11th. They're 7-2 and 2-1 in Q1, with wins of 24-10 at Northwestern (SP+ No. 20) and 20-19 at Michigan. Road wins over good teams are the currency this list pays in, and Iowa has two of them.
Oregon is 18 vs 12, and this is the one where the résumé lens raises an eyebrow. The Ducks are 2-1 in Q1 with the Ohio State win. Their losses are 31-39 at Oklahoma State (SP+ No. 23), 15-17 to UCLA (SP+ No. 17) and 10-21 at Illinois (SP+ No. 48). Quads has Oklahoma State 38th and Illinois 39th, both 6-3 like Oregon, both with a win over Oregon, both way below them. If it bugs you, it bugs me too. Losing to decent teams on the road costs so little in a quadrant system that a team can lose to the people below it and stay above them.
The AP ignored two more. Oklahoma is Quads 23rd with zero AP votes. They're 5-4, but the wins include Texas on a neutral field and 23-7 at Florida, and the losses are Michigan, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina. Quads has them one spot ahead of South Carolina (24th), who beat them 42-25, and far ahead of Michigan (61st), who beat them 17-10. Same flag as Oregon. Four losses to teams the system respects cost less than one loss to a team it doesn't.
Wisconsin is Quads 25th, also zero votes. They're 6-3, with a 24-7 win over USC and a 24-20 win at Penn State. They're also 0-3 in Q1 and SP+ No. 40, so this is a "beat two names, lost everything hard" résumé, and I'd be fine with them 30th. 25th is the system being generous with a Penn State road win.
Missouri went the other way, out of the poll at 6-3 with 50 votes left over. Quads has them 27th. A 20-34 home loss to Texas on top of a 3-31 loss at Ole Miss says the voters had it right, and we're only two spots apart anyway.
Alabama Belongs Back in the Top Five
One change I'd make for next week. Alabama is AP No. 7, up from 9, after going to Baton Rouge and beating LSU 31-13. LSU is SP+ No. 4. Quads has the Tide 8th, a spot under the voters, and I'd go higher than both of them.
The résumé is 7-2 with both losses in Q1, 17-20 to Georgia and 10-26 at Tennessee. A road win at an SP+ top-5 team, added to a season where the only losses came to good teams, is a cleaner résumé than Notre Dame's at No. 3. The Irish are 8-1 and 1-1 in Q1 with the BYU loss, and their best win is the Miami game. Alabama's best win is at LSU, and I'll take that one. Flip them.
The argument against is sitting right there in the head-to-head flags. Georgia beat Alabama at Alabama. Tennessee beat Alabama by 16 at home. Putting the Tide above both of them, which I'm endorsing for the AP here, asks voters to ignore two results they watched. Georgia, with the Q3 loss to Auburn, is a closer call than it looks. Tennessee, with two losses and one Q1 win, isn't.
So Alabama into the top five and Notre Dame out of it. The LSU win was the best road result anybody posted this weekend, and the poll should say so.