A New No. 1 Arrives Sunday: When the AP Top 25 Drops, and Why No Two Predictions Agree

By Sunday afternoon, college football will have a new No. 1 — and the predictions arriving ahead of the polls cannot agree on who it should be. The Coaches Poll drops at about 1 p.m. ET today, Sunday, October 18, and the AP Top 25 arrives at about 2 p.m. ET, and together they will sort out the wreckage of the wildest Saturday of the season. No. 1 Georgia lost. No. 2 Notre Dame lost. No. 5 Indiana, No. 6 Alabama and No. 7 Texas lost too — five of the top seven teams in the country, gone in a single day, with No. 13 Missouri, No. 16 Mississippi State and No. 18 Oklahoma State joining them on the wrong side of the scoreboard for good measure. So Sunday's polls get to do something they almost never do this deep into October: crown a new No. 1, rebuild a top five nobody predicted a week ago, and start a very loud argument about who deserves it. Here is when the polls drop, what actually happened on Saturday, and why the smartest people in the sport see the new top of the sport so differently.

The carnage, result by result

Start in Provo, where the day's signature result landed: BYU beat Notre Dame 28-24, snapping the Fighting Irish's 16-game winning streak and handing the Cougars the kind of win that does not just move a team up a poll — it changes what voters think the team is. Notre Dame arrived as the No. 2 team in the country and left with its season redefined. BYU arrived with everything to gain and gained all of it.

In Bloomington, Ohio State passed the hardest kind of road test there is: a close win at Indiana that snapped the Hoosiers' 22-game winning streak. Indiana was No. 5 and unbeaten at home in what felt like forever; the Buckeyes walked into that environment and walked out with the single most useful result any team in the country owns this morning — a road win over a top-five team that had not lost in 22 games. If you are looking for the result that will sit at the top of the most résumés when the voters sit down, that is the one.

The rest of the top seven fell in their own ways. Miami beat Florida State in double overtime, a rivalry game that refused to end on schedule and very nearly refused to end at all. Florida upset Texas 27-24, a result that says as much about the Longhorns' unraveling as it does about the Gators' revival. Tennessee handled Alabama, removing the Crimson Tide from the top tier of the conversation in one afternoon. And Georgia, the No. 1 team in the country when the sun came up, simply lost — which is how a Saturday becomes a legend. College Football News, USA Today's List Wire and Sports Illustrated all tallied the same wreckage: five of the top seven, plus three more ranked teams, beaten in one day.

When the polls actually drop

So, the practical part. The new polls arrive Sunday, October 18, in the usual order: the Coaches Poll at approximately 1:00 p.m. ET, followed by the AP Top 25 at approximately 2:00 p.m. ET, according to Sports Illustrated. The Coaches Poll is the appetizer — a useful early read on how the sport's insiders are reordering the top. The AP poll is the one that gets printed, argued about and remembered. As of Sunday morning Pacific time, neither had been released. Everything below this paragraph is prediction and projection, clearly labeled — because the gap between what people think the poll will say and what it actually says is precisely where the fun is.

Three versions of the new No. 1

Here is the genuinely interesting thing about this Sunday: there is no consensus, and the disagreement is not manufactured. Sports Illustrated's prediction of the new AP Top 25 puts Ohio State at No. 1 — rewarding the Indiana road win — followed by Miami at 2, Georgia at 3, Indiana at 4, Ole Miss at 5 and BYU at 6. It is the résumé argument, cleanly made: the Buckeyes beat the best team anyone beat on Saturday, on the road.

Hail Florida Hail's projection agrees on Ohio State at No. 1 but reshuffles everything beneath: BYU all the way up to No. 2 on the strength of the Notre Dame win, Miami at No. 3, and — the hometown flourish — Florida back in the poll at No. 22 after the Texas upset. And then there is the one ballot we do not have to guess about. AP voter Brett McMurphy revealed his actual ballot, and it has Miami at No. 1 and BYU at No. 2, with Oklahoma State, Missouri and Mississippi State dropping out entirely and Northwestern, Florida and New Mexico entering the Top 25. A real voter, in other words, looked at the same Saturday and decided the double-overtime rivalry win in Miami outranked the road win in Bloomington.

That spread — Ohio State or Miami at the top, BYU anywhere from No. 2 to No. 6, Georgia still in the top three or sliding further — is the honest state of play. Voters reward different things: the best win, the best team, the least-damaged résumé. Georgia's case for staying near the top rests on the season-long body of work; Indiana's case for staying in the top five rests on losing close to the team everyone wants to crown. All of it gets settled, provisionally, at about 2:00 p.m. ET — and then argued about until next Saturday, when this sport will happily do it all again. Follow the fallout in our college football and sports coverage.