Who Is No. 1? Five Top-Eight Losses Remake the Playoff Picture

Who is No. 1? On any normal Sunday, the new polls answer that in one line. This Sunday they have to rank a wreck. Five of the top eight teams in the country lost on the same Saturday, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams both went down, and the loudest argument in college football this morning is about which unbeaten or one-loss team actually owns the best claim to the top spot.

The results are not in dispute. Unranked Auburn beat No. 1 Georgia 27 to 24 in Athens on a walk-off field goal. No. 8 BYU beat No. 2 Notre Dame 28 to 24. No. 5 Ohio State beat No. 4 Indiana 19 to 15. Florida beat No. 6 Texas 27 to 24 in Austin. No. 14 Tennessee beat No. 7 Alabama 26 to 10 in Knoxville. Five losses inside the top eight, in one day.

The three cases for No. 1

Miami has the cleanest record and the messiest resume. The Hurricanes are 6 and 0 and the highest-ranked unbeaten team standing, but they have no ranked wins, and they needed double overtime on Saturday to beat Florida State 43 to 35. Poll voters who reward winning above all else will put Miami first. Voters who read schedules will not.

Ohio State has the opposite profile. The Buckeyes own two ranked road wins, the hardest currency in a poll argument, and beat No. 4 Indiana head to head on Saturday. Their problem is the one loss on the record. In most seasons that ends the debate. This is not most seasons, because the teams ahead of them kept losing.

BYU has the single best win of the year. The Cougars were ranked No. 8 on Saturday morning and beat No. 2 Notre Dame by four. Nobody above them can point to a win that good. The question for BYU is whether voters jump a team seven spots for one result, however loud it was.

What Saturday broke

Start with the losers, because their seasons changed more. Georgia lost at home to an unranked rival and lost control of its own ranking argument; the Bulldogs now need help. Notre Dame lost the game that was supposed to carry its playoff case and has no conference title race to repair the damage. Texas fell in Austin to Florida and slides toward the playoff bubble. Alabama lost by 16 at Tennessee, its third straight defeat in Knoxville, and sits in the deepest trouble of the group: a proud record, a bad day, and a shrinking margin for any second mistake.

Indiana is the exception among the losers. A four-point loss at Ohio State, against a top-five team on the road, is the kind of defeat polls usually forgive. The Hoosiers should fall, but not far.

The playoff picture underneath the poll

Six unbeaten teams remain, according to NCAA.com. That number is the real shape of the playoff race. Every unbeaten team controls its own path. Every one-loss team is now arguing about style points, ranked wins and head-to-head results, which is exactly the argument Ohio State and BYU are built to win and Miami is built to fear.

The new USA Today Coaches Poll is due Sunday around 1 p.m. Eastern, with the AP poll following. Whichever team lands at No. 1, the honest headline is the same: Saturday did not settle the top of college football. It cleared it out and started the argument again.

What happens next

Watch three things this week. First, how far Georgia and Notre Dame fall, because that sets the price of a loss for everyone else. Second, whether BYU's win gets rewarded like a No. 1 win or treated as an upset to be discounted by November. Third, the next round of ranked matchups, because with six unbeaten teams left, the next Saturday like this one ends somebody's season for real.