Tons of top 25 teams lost in Week 9. Here’s what it means going forward

Week 9 didn’t look like the most glamorous, but the final weekend before the College Football Playoff committee’s initial rankings did its part to clear some brush. With 15 of 20 active AP-ranked teams on the road and almost everybody in that group facing decent challenges, we had a whole bunch of second-tier teams going down.

Eight AP-ranked teams lost to unranked teams, as a matter of fact, in addition to the three big games.

Below, we’re keeping track of each top-25 game’s impact, both before and after final scores, mostly paying attention to CFP committee business, not highlights and stuff.

Remember the things the committee has mostly demonstrated it rewards: wins over final top-25 teams, wins over bowl teams, road wins, dominant wins, weirdly excusable losses, being Alabama, and not being a mid-major. It does not care what your opponent’s AP ranking was at kickoff.

For the new polls and computer rankings after Week 9, go over here. Committee rankings won’t be out until Tuesday night.

Games in which the winning team will likely have a pretty high-quality Week 9 victory by season’s end. Or: really meaningful upsets.

Games in which the winner will probably have beaten a decent bowl team. I’m being somewhat generous to a few of these unranked teams, as far as chances of making a bowl go.

Since the committee’s essentially showed non-power teams aren’t eligible for the Playoff, let’s have a separate section for the race to be the top-ranked mid-major champ.

The committee tries not to care about your wins over teams that finish with bad records, though you can get some credit for winning on the road or really laying it to folks. So for the ranked teams here: just don’t lose!