Miami walked into South Bend on Saturday night as the No. 1 team in the country for the third straight week. The Hurricanes walked out 31-24 losers, and by Sunday afternoon the AP Top 25 had a new name on top: Georgia.
The Bulldogs did their half of the work in Oxford, where Gunner Stockton threw four touchdown passes, ran for a fifth, and Georgia buried Ole Miss 42-7. That was the Rebels' worst home loss since 2018, and it snapped a 16-game home winning streak. The voters noticed. Georgia took 53 of the 70 first-place votes and 1,729 points, good for the program's second turn at No. 1 this season. Miami slid four spots to No. 5 — the fourth top-ranked team knocked off the No. 1 perch this fall, the most in a single season since 2008.
The top five is the same five teams, reshuffled. Utah climbed to No. 2 at 9-0 with 12 first-place votes, the highest regular-season ranking in school history, earned with a 28-20 win over BYU. Notre Dame's reward for beating the No. 1 team in the country was one spot, up to No. 3, plus the remaining five first-place votes. UCLA sits No. 4, still unbeaten at 9-0 and ranked this high for the first time since 2001.
Notre Dame built a 24-3 lead and then spent the fourth quarter surviving. CJ Carr threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, two of them to Micah Gilbert. Miami, playing without injured star receiver Malachi Toney, scored 21 second-half points and drove to the edge of a tie with 3:36 left — where Elija Lofton's catch at the goal line came loose in Luke Talich's hands and stayed incomplete. One spot in the poll is all that separated the Irish's season from a very different Sunday.
The weekend's real damage report starts in Columbus. Oregon went into Ohio Stadium and won 41-28, and Ohio State paid for it with a ten-spot fall to No. 21. Two weeks ago the Buckeyes were No. 2. Now they sit at their lowest ranking since 2014, outside the pandemic season. LSU dropped nine spots to No. 24 after losing 31-13 to Alabama, and Ole Miss fell seven to No. 19, its home loss doubling as the weekend's most lopsided ranked defeat.
Three of last week's top ten lost on the same Saturday: Miami at Notre Dame, BYU at Utah, and Kentucky at Tennessee. That volume of damage at the top is why the poll reads less like a reshuffle and more like a rewrite — and why Tuesday's College Football Playoff rankings, the second set from the committee, now have a top five to argue with instead of one to rubber-stamp.
Tennessee made the loudest move upward, climbing seven spots to No. 9 after routing Kentucky 34-6 — the only team to jump into the top 10 from outside it. Iowa rose five to No. 16. Eight ranked teams lost on Saturday, and the churn ran deep enough that exactly one team in the entire poll, idle Indiana at No. 6, held the same spot it had a week ago.
Oregon is back in at No. 18 after five weeks out, its win at Ohio State worth 517 points and a ranking the Ducks had been chasing from the receiving-votes line. SMU returns at No. 25 off a 51-28 win over Virginia Tech. Missouri and Florida paid the exit toll. The Tigers fell out from No. 19 after losing to Texas and now lead the receiving-votes list with 50 points. Florida dropped from No. 25 to nothing — the Gators did not appear on the receiving-votes line at all.
The Top 25
| # | Team | Record | Points | 1st-place | vs last week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia Bulldogs | 8-1 | 1729 | 53 | +1 |
| 2 | Utah Utes | 9-0 | 1675 | 12 | +1 |
| 3 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | 8-1 | 1597 | 5 | +1 |
| 4 | UCLA Bruins | 9-0 | 1542 | — | +1 |
| 5 | Miami Hurricanes | 8-1 | 1430 | — | -4 |
| 6 | Indiana Hoosiers | 8-1 | 1376 | — | — |
| 7 | Alabama Crimson Tide | 7-2 | 1334 | — | +2 |
| 8 | Texas Longhorns | 7-2 | 1253 | — | +2 |
| 9 | Tennessee Volunteers | 7-2 | 1177 | — | +7 |
| 10 | Texas Tech Red Raiders | 8-1 | 1082 | — | +3 |
| 11 | Wake Forest Demon Deacons | 8-1 | 1067 | — | +3 |
| 12 | BYU Cougars | 7-2 | 1041 | — | -5 |
| 13 | Kentucky Wildcats | 7-2 | 897 | — | -5 |
| 14 | Houston Cougars | 7-2 | 803 | — | +3 |
| 15 | USC Trojans | 7-2 | 679 | — | +3 |
| 16 | Iowa Hawkeyes | 7-2 | 659 | — | +5 |
| 17 | Boise State Broncos | 8-1 | 563 | — | +3 |
| 18 | Oregon Ducks | 6-3 | 517 | — | NEW |
| 19 | Ole Miss Rebels | 6-3 | 415 | — | -7 |
| 20 | South Carolina Gamecocks | 6-3 | 399 | — | +3 |
| 21 | Ohio State Buckeyes | 6-3 | 349 | — | -10 |
| 22 | Arizona Wildcats | 7-2 | 324 | — | +2 |
| 23 | New Mexico Lobos | 8-1 | 301 | — | -1 |
| 24 | LSU Tigers | 6-3 | 277 | — | -9 |
| 25 | SMU Mustangs | 7-2 | 118 | — | NEW |
Others receiving votes: Missouri Tigers (50), Duke Blue Devils (49), Oklahoma State Cowboys (21), Liberty Flames (14), Louisville Cardinals (10), North Texas Mean Green (2).
The Week 11 board also lives on Previously's Stats Hub, next to the full season of polls.
The week ahead
Twelve games involve Top 25 teams this week, three of them ranked against ranked. No. 2 Utah goes to No. 22 Arizona on Friday night (Nov 13, 9:00 PM PT), the kind of road game that has ended perfect seasons before. Saturday opens with No. 11 Wake Forest at No. 25 SMU (9:00 AM PT) and closes its ranked set with No. 15 USC at No. 6 Indiana (12:30 PM PT), where the Hoosiers finally come off their idle week. Georgia's first defense of No. 1 comes at home against Missouri (Nov 14, 12:30 PM PT) — the team that just fell out of the poll and has nothing left to protect. Ohio State gets Northwestern at home, a get-right game with no margin attached. All of those games live on Previously's Game Center.
Sources: Associated Press Top 25, Week 11 (released November 8, 2026), via the ESPN rankings API; game details cross-checked against AP wire reports and the desk's AP Poll Watch ingest of November 8, 2026. The College Football Playoff committee publishes its next rankings Tuesday, November 10.
