CFB’s New Parity Era: Penn State, Texas Top-25 Exits Signal Shift

Chaos continues to reign across college football as the consequences of losing this weekend proved particularly severe for two top-10 teams.

No. 7 Penn State fell entirely out of the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll after losing Saturday at unranked and winless UCLA, a team less than three weeks removed from firing coach DeShaun Foster and installing interim coach Tim Skipper, in a game widely considered the college football upset of the season.

Just two weeks ago, the Nittany Lions were ranked third in the country and seemed to be a lock for the College Football Playoff, but their season has been radically altered after two straight losses that include last week’s home defeat in double overtime to Oregon.

No. 9 Texas, meanwhile, also is out of the AP Top 25 after falling Saturday on the road to unranked Florida, and the Longhorns have two losses as well after the season-opening defeat at No. 1 Ohio State. 

The drops brought the Nittany Lions and Longhorns each out of the AP poll for the first time since 2022 and are particularly shocking given that Texas was the preseason No. 1, with Penn State right behind at No. 2. Penn State’s fall was the second-biggest out of the top-25 in the 99-year history of the poll, not counting preseason polls or the 2020 pandemic season.

The shifts over the past six weeks also emphasize the wild nature of this season and highlight the fast-rising parity across the sport. With more blue-blood programs piling up losses in the first half of the season, the likelihood of two- and three-loss teams having viable CFP candidacies continues to increase—something that will further inflame debate around the hot-button issue. 

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar was asked after the UCLA loss if the team still was a CFP competitor, and after a nervous laugh, asked, “What do you think?” before ultimately saying, “Yes.”

Here Come the Irish

Notre Dame, left for dead by many observers three weeks after falling to 0–2, continues its sharp rise back into the CFP conversation. A decisive home win over Boise State has left the Fighting Irish with a winning record, and the team rose again from a prior No. 21 ranking to No. 16 in the latest poll. 

The current AP poll is very clearly rewarding teams that have managed to keep their won-loss records unblemished. The top seven teams and eight of the top nine are all undefeated, and only one team that is still ranked lost this past weekend: No. 20 Vanderbilt, which fell at No. 8 Alabama. 

The turbulent nature of the 2025 college football season is likely to be a further boon for what has already been a banner campaign for viewership. Data provided by Nielsen to Front Office Sports showed that the sport through Week 5 was up by more than 10% in per-game viewership, even with applying the new Big Data + Panel measurement process to last year’s figures.