VivaVlog

Is the last game in the Pac-12 as we know it also the biggest Pac-12 game in decades? The latest AP Top 25 rankings say so. Let’s dive into this week’s poll with thoughts on and context for the conference championship games ahead:

1. If there were no conference championship games, there’d be a perfectly reasonable four-team College Football Playoff right now thanks to four 12-0 teams in Georgia, Michigan, Washington and Florida State. How should they be ranked?

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I continued my season-long trend of No. 1 flexibility and moved Michigan to the top after it earned a 30-24 win against Ohio State in the biggest game of the regular season. The Wolverines had no marquee wins until November, but now they’ve beaten a pair of top-10 teams in the Buckeyes and Penn State. The move was made easier by Georgia’s middling effort against Georgia Tech, though I can’t say I have any issue with the 52 voters who stuck with Georgia at No. 1 (compared to 10 who voted for Michigan). Both teams have a strong case, but for now Georgia’s second-longest No. 1 streak ever — 24 consecutive polls — continues. Alabama will have a chance to end it in Atlanta.

Washington is surviving in a lot of close games, but it has the win against Oregon to headline a solid resume and seems like a clear No. 3 choice. Credit to Florida State for surviving as well at Florida without Jordan Travis. I’d take any of the one-loss Power 5 teams to beat FSU right now, but the Seminoles deserve a top-four spot based on what they have accomplished, not assuming what will happen next.

Per College Poll Tracker, all 10 voters who opted for Michigan at No. 1 had Georgia at No. 2. Three voters have Michigan third. Washington is ranked as high as second (three voters) and as low as sixth (one). Florida State is ranked as high as third (eight voters) and as low as seventh (one). Ohio State fell to sixth in the poll but hung onto four third-place votes.

AP Top 25 vs. my ballot

2. Michigan has now beaten an AP top-five team three years in a row (all Ohio State) after a 15-year drought between 2006 and 2021. The Wolverines last beat Ohio State three times in a row from 1995-97 — and all three of those Buckeyes teams were also ranked in the top five. That, however, was part of a stretch in which Michigan won eight of nine games against AP top-five teams overall from 1993-99. The current run features long-awaited ownership of the rivalry against Ohio State, but the next step is extending that to beating a top-five opponent outside of Ohio State in the Playoff after the losses to TCU and Georgia in the CFP the past two years.

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3. Ohio State has had seven seasons — including each of the past two — in which it lost to Michigan and finished ranked in the top six. It’s a ranking most schools would be over the moon to achieve, but the curse of Ohio State is it can’t help but feel like a failure when paired with a loss to the Wolverines. This year’s team could be heading for the same fate if it wins its bowl game.

Ordering the one-loss Power 5 teams is a a challenge, as they should all be bunched tightly together. I opted for No. 7 for Ohio State — a bit of a harsh fall after a six-point road loss to Michigan, but Oregon has been playing better football and Texas can still hang its hat on the win against Alabama.

4. A recurring theme of the season: We’ve had flirtations with chaos, but upsets have rarely come to fruition. That continued Saturday, from Alabama’s miracle fourth-down survival at Auburn to Georgia shutting the door on Georgia Tech to Florida State pulling off a road win at Florida without Travis to Washington beating Washington State on a last-second field goal. The one exception: Kentucky took down Louisville for its first road win against a top-10 team since 1977 at Penn State.

It was just the fifth time this season that a team ranked in the AP top 10 at the time of the game lost to an unranked opponent:

Unranked wins over AP top 10

Since the poll expanded to 25 teams in 1989, it’s tied for the 27th most upsets by unranked teams against top-10 opponents in a regular season. It’s not quite an unprecedented lack of chaos — the 1997 season had only three, for example — but it’s undoubtedly a low number. We’ve seen as many as 21 (2007).

This is, however, the first time since 1996 that a regular season passed without a single win by an unranked team against an AP top-five opponent. That year, Texas subsequently shocked No. 3 Nebraska in the Big 12 title game.

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5. Is conference championship weekend chaos ahead this year? AP top-five teams are 30-9 against teams ranked outside the top 10 in conference championship games. Losses include TCU to Kansas State and USC to Utah last year, but only one other one (Oregon over Utah in 2019) since 2011. This year, only Michigan faces such a situation, as the No. 2 Wolverines meet No. 18 Iowa for the Big Ten title.

A team ranked outside the AP top 10 hasn’t won the Big Ten title game since Wisconsin’s wins in the first two editions in 2011 and 2012. In the past two seasons, Michigan beat unranked Purdue 43-22 and No. 15 Iowa 42-3.

Since 1990, Iowa’s only win against a top-five team away from Kinnick Stadium was in 2009 at Penn State. It is 3-13 against top-five Michigan teams, winning in 2016, 1985 and 1981.

6. The American Athletic Conference may have been weakened by the departures of Cincinnati, Houston and UCF, but it still has a conference title game with a pair of AP-ranked teams, as No. 17 Tulane will meet poll newcomer No. 25 SMU. It’s the fifth AAC title game in a row that features two AP-ranked teams. SMU is trying to finish ranked for the first time since 1984, pre-NCAA Death Penalty, and Tulane is trying to finish ranked in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1938-39.

With No. 20 Liberty (Conference USA) and No. 23 Toledo (MAC) ranked and No. 24 James Madison (Sun Belt) ineligible, the Mountain West and Sun Belt are the only two conference championship games without a ranked team.

7. On its way to the SEC, No. 7 Texas is trying to beat No. 19 Oklahoma State for its first Big 12 title since 2009. It’s remarkable that the Longhorns have won the conference only three times, also doing so in 1996 and 2005.

The Cowboys are a stellar 10-11 against top-10 teams since 2011, including their Bedlam win against Oklahoma earlier this month. If Oklahoma State were to win, it would join that unranked 1996 Texas team as the only Big 12 title game winners ranked lower than 13th (Kansas State was No. 13 when it upset TCU last year).

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8. No. 15 Louisville is making its first ACC title game appearance against a No. 4 Florida State team trying to win its first conference title since 2014. The Cardinals have four all-time wins against AP top-five teams, including two against Florida State: the 63-20 shellacking in 2016 and a 26-20 Thursday night classic in 2002.

9. This is the fourth time Alabama and Georgia are meeting in an SEC title game. Alabama won the first three. If No. 8 Alabama wins this time, it would be the lowest-ranked SEC champion since No. 13 Georgia beat No. 3 LSU in 2005.

AP No. 1 teams are 12-5 in conference championship games but have won 10 of the past 11. The only loss by an AP No. 1 since 2009? Georgia to Alabama in 2021, before the Bulldogs turned around and beat the Crimson Tide for the national title.

10. There have been 10 matchups of AP top-five teams in conference championship games: eight in the SEC, plus Clemson–Notre Dame in the ACC in 2020 and Michigan State-Iowa in the Big Ten in 2015. No. 3 Washington and No. 5 Oregon may be on their way to the Big Ten, but their Pac-12 finale is one of the biggest games in conference history.

After all, the Pac-12 hasn’t produced a College Football Playoff team since 2016, and this could be a CFP play-in game. There’s also the fact that top-five matchups within the conference are rare: There hasn’t been one game featuring two Pac-12 teams ranked in the AP top five since No. 3 USC beat No. 2 UCLA in 1976, when it was the Pac-8. In fact, the only three AP top-five matchups in conference history all featured USC and UCLA.

Oregon-Washington is a storied rivalry, but the Huskies’ 36-33 win in October was the first AP top-10 matchup in series history. Now, less than two months later, they’re set for their first top-five showdown.

(Top photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

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