AP top 25: the undefeateds are dwindling

Having an undefeated season should be precisely what every college football team wants each year even if it is a bit of a pipe dream. However, very few teams ever accomplish that feat. Most years we are lucky to see one undefeated team, in 2017 we were actually able to see two. Three teams saw their dreams of an undefeated season fall to the wayside this past weekend as Kentucky, LSU and Oklahoma all suffered their first loss of the year.

This now leaves us with 11 undefeated teams remaining and all of them appear in the AP poll. USF and Cincinnati both made their first appearance of the season, both hailing from the American Athletic Conference while conference mate UCF sits pretty at 10. Its safe to say that if the top five teams can stay undefeated they should be a shoe in for the playoff while if West Virginia wins out they’re also sure to get in with one of the former teams being upset, yet what about the other five teams?

Colorado and NC State are lesser known programs coming from down conferences but would they really be kept out of the playoff if they each had an undefeated record and conference championship to their name? Neither team has played a ranked team so far and both only have one ranked team remaining in their schedule, so there may be merit to keeping each of them out. USF and Cincinnatti are simply too low currently and with them coming from a group of five conference I doubt they’d make any noise, but what about UCF?

UCF now sits at 10 and while their schedule is pretty meek, they would finish it against the aforementioned Cincinnati and USF and potentially play a tough (likely ranked by then) Houston team in the conference championship. That would mean the Golden Knights would finish the season against three ranked opponents and would be on a 25 game winning streak spanning two seasons, it would be mighty tough to keep them out even with the level of conference they’re in. The rest of the season sets up to be an interesting one indeed.

1. Alabama, 6-0 (-)
2. Georgia, 6-0 (-)
3. Ohio State, 6-0 (-)
4. Clemson, 6-0 (-)
5. Notre Dame, 6-0 (+1)
6. West Virginia, 5-0 (+3)
7. Washington, 5-1 (+3)
8. Penn State, 4-1 (+3)
9. Texas, 5-1 (+10)
10. UCF, 5-0 (+2)
11. Oklahoma, 5-1 (-4
12. Michigan, 5-1 (+5)
13. LSU, 5-1 (-8)
14. Florida, 5-1 (+8)
15. Wisconsin, 5-1 (+1)
16. Miami, 5-1 (+1)
17. Oregon, 4-1 (+1)
18. Kentucky, 5-1 (-5)
19. Colorado, 5-0 (+2)
20. NC State, 5-0 (+3)
21. Auburn, 4-2 (-13)
22. Texas A&M, 4-2 (NR)
23. South Flordia, 5-0 (NR)
24. Mississippi State, 4-2 (NR)
25. Cincinnati, 6-0 (NR)