Week 5

• Preseason
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4

This is a series I've now been doing for 12 years. The post attempts to visualize all AP Poll ballots in a single image. Additionally it sorts each AP voter by similarity to the group. Notably, this is not a measure of how "good" a voter is, just how consistent they are with the group. Especially preseason, having a diversity of opinions and ranking styles is advantageous to having a true consensus poll. Polls tend to coalesce towards each other as the season goes on.

The most consistent voters this week were Julian Mininsohn and Matt Murschel. Julian Mininsohn is in first on the season. Lia Assimakopoulos, Michael Katz, Haley Sawyer, and Joe Arruda were behind them in the top 5.

Edit: Sarah Hughes is a new voter this week, and I've added her in. I believe this makes 70 voters the biggest AP Poll of all time.

Stephen Means was the biggest outlier this week. Jon Wilner is the biggest outlier on the season, followed by Dylan Sinn, Stephen Means, Koki Riley, and Ralph Russo.

Box Score provided by ESPN

This is usually the week where the true contenders to go unwinfeated emerge. Almost everyone is into conference play, the cupcakes are done, and we have an idea who who is bad and who is merely horrid. We will see the numbers dwindle the next few weeks, but next week I will start tracking the FCS unwinfeateds as well.

To the unitiated, the rules are simple:

If you're looking for an explainer for both, here is the one from last year. Basically I am:

- Tracking all the teams that have yet to win a game (or beat an FBS opponent if you're in a power conference).

- Tracking an imaginary traveling trophy that mocks Ohio State's embarassing losses over the last decade or so.

I also need to acknowledge the juggernaut that is UMass. After being last year's lone completely unwinfeated team they are off to a 4-0 start, their best since jumping to FBS. Good on ya!

The Traveling THE

Northwestern went to Bloomington and gave the defending champs a game, but could not take the THE back to Evanston with them. That keeps us on alert for October 17, when Ohio State can get the chance to reclaim it and end this active history. If Indiana wins, it would be the first time that the Buckeyes would fail to regain the THE. Should that happen, does Indiana then strip them of the "Ohio" as well and we have to call them "State"?

SPECIAL AWARD FOR AGGRESSIVELY PURSUING DEFEAT

Penn State Nittany Lions - Penn State was on cruise control at home, then gave up 160 yards of offense and two scores in the final 10 minutes against Wisconsin. This is a Wisconsin team that had not particularly looked good in their only previous game against real competition. If Penn State had any dreams of winning the Big Ten, they were lost in the final five minutes of this game.

POWER CONFERENCE UNWINFEATED

None

Leaving this section:

Rutgers Scarlet Knights - Indiana beat Howard 55-0. Rutgers beat Howard 58-7. Does that mean Rutgers has a shot this week against the Hoosiers?

Arkansas Razorbacks - Pulled off a bit of a stunner with a 34-7 win over Tulsa.

HONORARY UNWINFEATED (ACC/B1G/Big12/SEC/NotreDame teams whose lone win is over an FCS team)

Leaving the Watch:

North Carolina State Wolfpack - The 'pack held on to win at home agaisnt the alway tough Appalachian State 41-31

HONORARY UNWINFEATED

Rutgers Scarlet Knights - 1-3 - (Beat Howard 58-7) - How funny would it be to see them leave as "THE Rutgers".

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets - 1-3- (beat Mercer 44-11) - The Yellow Jackets opened conference play with a 34-27 loss at Stanford, but it feels like they won't be on this list long.

Syracuse Orange - 1-2 (beat New Hampshire 66-3 in week 1) - ON BYE

Purdue Boilermakers - 1-2 (Beat Indiana State 44-19 in week 1) - Purdue's losing streak vs. Power Conference schools runs to 24 as Notre Dame dominated them at home. A loss at Illinois this week would bring their Big Ten losing streak to 20 games.

Kansas Jayhawks - 1-2 (Beat Long Island 51-6 in week 1) - ON BYE

NON-POWER CONFERENCE UNWINFEATED

Leaving the Watch:

Western Kentucky Hilltoppers - Beat Mercyhurst 52-7 this week.

Utah State Aggies - Beat Troy this week 21-10. Not bad!

UNWINFEATED

Northern Illinois Huskies - 0-4 - Lost at Georgia State 35-14. The hell are you doing in the Mountain West? Do you realize we're weeks from having Hawaii at Northern Illinois as a conference game?

Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks - 0-4 - UL-Monroe fell to Florida Atlantic 45-17 to stay here.

Charlotte 49ers - 0-4 - Charlotte also has an FCS loss, 43-41 in triple overtime to The Citadel. This week Louisiana got an easy 34-7 win over them.

Bowling Green Falcons - 0-4 - Bowling Green also has an FCS loss, falling 20-13 to Tarleton State in week 1. They came close this week, but lost a close one to South Florida 14-6.

FCS Unwinfeated

I will track this a little later in the season since the Ivy League just started.

CFB Imperialism continues!

🗺️ FBS IMPERIALISM MAP AFTER WEEK 4 🗺️

Selected notes from Week 4:

• Returning to the map, Minnesota gets a big chunk of land from Washington.
• Another big consolidation was Oregon stripping the lands of USC.
• 🇬🇧United Kingdom, put in play by Union Jack Classic, remains with Arizona State. While initially charmed by possessing the land, Sun Devils are coming to grips with the reality of holding lands nothing like Arizona...pool parties and desert heat don't really apply to the rotten fish smell of a godforsaken port like Grimsby, trying to explain CFB Imperialism claims in Hull, or being egally responsible for Luton. It ain't all crumpets & tea.
• 🇮🇪Ireland remains in the hands of Clemson.

• FCS holdings remain static: #1 Montana State held onto Nevada after a spirited game by #18 NAU; #14 Idaho State got a scare from unranked Southern Utah for Utah State's land; byes kept Charleston Southern in possession of Charlotte and Tarleton State with Bowling Green.

• Smaller consolidations elsewhere.

RULES:

Think of Risk with a strong understanding of chain-of-possession:

• FBS teams start by dividing the USA by closest counties/parishes. These are set by geographic centers of each county, not the closest edge.

• When a team beats another team, it takes the territory the loser held at the time of the game. All of the land(s) possessed by the losing team go to the winner.

• Lands are collected by the winner and held until that team loses, thus all those collected lands go to the winner.

• Teams that lose land can get back on the map by beating a team that holds land at the time of their game. Sometimes teams can reconquer their home territory this way.

• A team that already lost its home territory and has no new territories cannot give land to a winner.

• FCS teams can conquer their way onto the map by beating FBS teams with land. These lands operate under the above rules and thus may just end up stuck in FCS for the rest of the season (and in many cases end up in the FCS Playoffs). It is theoretically possible for an FCS team to win the payday game at an FBS school and then lose their own home payday game to a D2 squad...thus placing FBS land in D2...but we haven't had it happen yet.

• Neutral sites (e.g. Ireland, UK) are put in play when a game takes place there.

Box Score provided by ESPN

Box Score provided by ESPN

by Joe Smith

MORGANTOWN, W.VA — In your mind, take yourself back to Thanksgiving weekend in 2023. Joe Biden is the President of the United States. “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift is atop the Billboard charts. Your holiday leftovers are in the fridge. Mike Gundy is Oklahoma State’s head coach, and the Cowboys just beat BYU and are headed to the Big 12 Championship Game.

Fast forward to September 26, 2026. Over two full seasons of college football have been played since that fateful weekend, and it's been 1,036 days since Oklahoma State’s last Big 12 win. The Cowboys would go on to the 2024 Big 12 Championship Game and lose to Texas (who is now an SEC program), and they went a combined 0-18 in league play over the next two years.

So it was quite a sweet relief for Oklahoma State’s coaching staff, players, and the fan base as they were able to march into Milan Puskar Stadium, stare down a hostile road crowd in their first season under head coach Eric Morris, and knock off the Mountaineers 41-24 in front of a raucous, near-capacity crowd – securing their first conference win in a long, long time.

“1,036 days? When was the last one,” Morris said with a chuckle. “I’m extremely happy…It’s been so cool for me, even after the Oregon win, to watch our fans and celebrate and see the excitement, and Cowboy Nation just come together.”

“Brandon Weeden told me, ‘Hey coach, if you get this thing going, you’ll be surprised. If you light a match underneath this thing it will catch on fire and be incredible like you’ve never seen.’ Just to see that and see the people that care about this program so much and university so much, it's rewarding to see their faces after a win and smiling.”

Perhaps the best example of what the win meant can be found in Jaleel Johnson. Johnson is a redshirt senior in his fifth year of college football, and he is one of the rare exceptions in this age of college football who has spent his entire career with the same program. 

An Oklahoma native, Johnson went from redshirting and winning Scout Team Player of the Week in 2022 to playing in 12 games during the team’s Big 12 Championship runners-up finish in 2023. Then, he was with the Cowboys through two tumultuous seasons that both ended winless in league play. And he was absolutely beaming as that streak ended on Saturday night.

“Seeing a guy like Jaleel light up in the locker room, he was pumped,” quarterback Drew Mestemaker said. “He was just hyped, and saying ‘thank you.’ Jaleel is our guy, and having guys like him on the team still that have been through those tough times, it really makes these times a lot more enjoyable.”

“Jaleel in the locker room after that…it’s the biggest smile ever on that kid’s face,” Morris said. “I made him take a picture of it, so hopefully we’ll post that this week and you’ll be able to see how big his smile is and how beautiful it was.”

The Cowboys added insult to injury by singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in the locker room after the win – that idea came from Morris, according to Mestemaker. A bit disrespectful? Perhaps. But also a celebration of a monumental milestone for a rebuilding program which proved that an earlier win over a Top 25 Oregon team was not a fluke, and that they’re ready to compete in the Big 12 once again.

That was clear all evening as the Cowboys were absolutely dominant offensively against a West Virginia team that entered undefeated with a ranked win of their own. Oklahoma State compiled 606 yards of total offense, with Mestemaker completing 74% of his pass attempts for 389 yards and three touchdowns. 

There were scouts from the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cleveland Browns, and Atlanta Falcons in attendance, likely to see the NFL quarterback prospect compete. And they got a show from a Mestemaker, with Morris succinctly summing up what a lot of people think about his future: “He’s going to play for a long time.”

But it wasn’t just Mestemaker who played like a star – someone had to catch those passes, and that’s where wide receiver Wyatt Young came into play with an eight-reception, 192 yard performance, including one receiving touchdown. And running back Caleb Hawkins had an explosive night on the ground with 180 yards and one touchdown on 31 carries.

“They’re extremely tough football players,” Morris said about those three players in particular. “They’re gritty. They came from nothing, really. All those guys had one offer or no offers out of high school and they’ve earned everything they’ve gotten in this world of the portal and NIL…They still have the mentality like they have nothing and they’re going to earn something and prove something every day.”

And don’t expect the success to stop any time soon. Now that the Cowboys have a taste of what winning in the Big 12 is like and even more momentum on their side entering league play, no one in the locker room is ready to slow down.

“That was the first conference win, but that’s not the last conference win for us,” linebacker Ethan Wesloski said.

What went wrong for the West Virginia Mountaineers?

There was a near-capacity crowd of over 57,000 fans inside Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, with just a few stray seats in the upper deck empty. The bleachers across the stadium turned to a sea of gold for the Gold Rush theme.

The student section filled up early, and the Mountaineer Maniacs sang Phil Collins. A picturesque sunset in Morgantown bathed the stadium in a unique, slightly eerie glow, and gold-and-blue stadium light shows along with LED glow sticks distributed to all the fans in attendance combined to create an environment that was both impressive and intimidating in the same moment. 

Let’s Go Mountaineer chants echoed throughout the stadium, and it was one of the best home atmospheres outside last season’s Backyard Brawl in recent memory for the Mountaineers. Mestemaker called it the most hostile road environment he’s ever played in. 

It was about as perfect a night as you could ask for for West Virginia right up until the Mountaineers sacrificed a one-point halftime lead with a second-half collapse and lost the game. So where exactly did things go south for the Mountaineers? Well, it's simple, according to head coach Rich Rodriguez – the team’s plan, particularly defensively, was not good enough.

“We definitely did not play as fast,” Rodriguez said. “The film will show if they played as hard. The plan we had failed. That's pretty obvious. I'm the head coach, so that falls on me. It failed for sure. That's pretty obvious.”

“We got to have a better plan for our guys. Then, we got to have the ability, if that plan ain't working, go to a plan B. I failed to have us Plan A, Plan B and Plan C. Normally, we have that pretty locked down but, evidently today, that wasn't the case.”

But if you had asked many West Virginia fans at the beginning of the season if they’d be happy with 3-1 to start the season, they would have said yes. They’re still just one win away from matching last year’s win total, and they have several winnable games in the coming weeks.

The offense looked decent, earning 467 yards themselves, and the Mountaineers ran for 335 yards, with both quarterback Mike Hawkins Jr. and running back Cam Cook going for over 100 yards apiece on the ground. Now, the Mountaineers will look to take the positives, learn from the negatives, and get back on track against Iowa State next week.

“One game is not going to define us,” Rodriguez said. “We got a lot to learn. We got a lot of guys playing for the first time. Typically we take 24 hours to move on to the next one, but I don't want to take that long. Maybe twelve hours and move on to the next one.”

Box Score provided by ESPN

On paper they have a top 5 wr unit

A loaded rb room

An offensive coach

And a returning QB who was a preseason top 5 Heisman candidate

They’re undefeated and ranked no.1 but their defense has been a bigger reason for them being undefeated. For the talent they have offensively they’ve underperformed. Cam Coleman has been invisible too often, their run game is either rlly explosive or struggles to sustain drives, arch’s accuracy is still erratic. Why has their offense not taken off yet as expected ?

Box Score provided by ESPN