You get a loss, and you get a loss. If you had a number next to your name, you were in danger of taking an L. Three undefeated teams fell, and four other top-25 teams lost to unranked teams.
2016 college football rankings, Week 12: How much change after that wild Saturday?
We’re adding the AP and Coaches polls in the table below as soon as they’re released on Sunday afternoon, plus a couple others. New Playoff rankings will arrive Tuesday night.
Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
Clemson, Michigan and Washington each fell for the first time yesterday in the first truly chaotic Saturday of an otherwise pretty banal season (so much for that). Those were the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 teams heading into the week, and they were all defeated. You might think it’s a rarity for such a thing to happen, and you would be correct.
The ONLY time the #2, #3 and #4 ranked teams lost on the SAME day in the regular season was in 1985.
— ESPN CollegeFootball (@ESPNCFB) November 13, 2016
But the carnage wasn’t only at the very top, as Auburn, Texas A&M, North Carolina (on Thursday) and Virginia Tech fell as well.
The biggest questions is what the Playoff committee will do. With all their different criteria, which dwell more on overall schedule strength than the human polls tend to do, how will this week’s upheaval be judged by the arbiters of the Playoff? We’ll see Tuesday around 7:30 p.m. ET.
| AP (previous, if different) | Coaches (prev, if diff) | S&P+ | Massey | |
| 1 | Alabama | Alabama | Alabama | Alabama |
| 2 | Ohio State (6) | Ohio State (5) | Michigan | Ohio State |
| 3 | Louisville (5) | Louisville (6) | Ohio State | Michigan |
| 4 | Michigan (2) | Michigan (3) | Louisville | Clemson |
| 5 | Clemson (3) | Clemson (2) | Clemson | Louisville |
| 6 | Wisconsin (7) | Wisconsin (7) | LSU | Washington |
| 7 | Washington (4) | Washington (4) | Washington | Wisconsin |
| 8 | Oklahoma (9) | Oklahoma (9) | Wisconsin | Penn State |
| 9 | Penn State (12) | West Virginia (10) | Auburn | WMU |
| 10 | West Virginia (11) | Penn State (14) | USC | Auburn |
| 11 | Utah (13) | Utah (12) | Florida State | WSU |
| 12 | Colorado (16) | Colorado (15) | Penn State | Colorado |
| 13 | Oklahoma State (17) | Oklahoma State (17) | Oklahoma | USC |
| 14 | Western Michigan | LSU (19) | Colorado | Oklahoma |
| 15 | USC (NR) | Florida State (18) | Boise State | LSU |
| 16 | LSU (19) | Auburn (8) | Western Kentucky | FSU |
| 17 | Florida State (20) | Nebraska (20) | Florida | Texas A&M |
| 18 | Auburn (8) | Florida (16) | San Diego State | WVU |
| 19 | Nebraska (21) | USC (NR) | Miami | Boise State |
| 20 | Washington State (23) | Washington State (NR) | Ole Miss | Utah |
| 21 | Florida (22) | Western Michigan (NR) | Texas A&M | Stanford |
| 22 | Boise State (24) | Texas A&M (11) | Troy | Tennessee |
| 23 | Texas A&M (10) | Boise State (24) | VCU | Nebraska |
| 24 | San Diego State (NR) | North Carolina (13) | Western Michigan | Florida |
| 25 | Troy (NR) | San Diego State (NR) | Appalachian State | UNC |
The four rankings used here
The Associated Press Top 25: The longest-running and best-respected human poll. Didn’t have any official bearing on the latter years of the BCS, and doesn’t have any official bearing on the Playoff.
The USA Today Coaches Poll: Formerly part of the BCS, and now just a poll. It tends to react more cautiously than the AP’s. Though polling athletic departments in order to rank other athletic departments is dubious, we still want multiple human polls in here, and this is the other big one.
The Massey computer composite: A collection of dozens of ratings, all combined into one. We include the latest version as of publication. (It does also include the two human polls, but they can’t sway it all that much.)
Bill Connelly’s S&P+ ratings: SB Nation’s favored advanced stat, which arrives a bit later than the others. An important thing to keep in mind: for the first few weeks, it also factors in preseason projections. It’ll look pretty weird early on, but it’s proved to be a very strong predictor against the Vegas spread over the long term.
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