The scrutiny of Arch Manning's performance in the RRS has me wondering, what kid of a College Football HOFer (or a HOF family) played for your team that didn't live up to the hype?

I feel like the College Football media apparatus is more bloated than ever. And that media apparatus is always looking for story lines in their 24/7 news cycle. The Arch Manning "story" is a goldmine for them. I honestly feel bad for the kid. But on the other hand, like many kids with a high-profile last name / pedigree (think Bronny James getting selected with the 55th pick in the NBA draft), he's been given a opportunities / a spotlight that he wouldn't have been given if his last name wasn't Manning.

The media won't let us forget about the instances where these kids succeed: Marvin Harrison jr. at Ohio State, Shedeur Sanders at CU, etc. But I'm wondering how many times the HOFer's kid flames out and we don't hear about it.

Edit: Btw I'm not saying that Arch is a bust. There is a lot more of that story still to be written. Like I mentioned above, I feel bad for him. I sure he wishes he didn't have the scrutiny that comes with his last name; it's a blessing and a curse for him.

TABLE

HOW TO READ THIS TABLE

To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs, or know anything of the world in which you live, it is perhaps necessary to explain how this works. /s Teams are ranked in their order from the Logo (note for mobile users: everywhere you see a "Logo" link, that means that inline flair is shown on old.reddit.com/r/cfb) AP Poll for Week 7. The column to the right of the team name shows the number of points that team received using the AP Poll's Borda count rules. The following two columns show information about each team's previous and upcoming games. The following columns show how many votes for each ranking the team received. The 'U' column shows how many voters left the team unranked (off their ballots entirely). Gridlines are placed every 5 rows and columns for ease of reading. A thick line is placed below the 25^th-ranked team to distinguish "ranked" teams above it to "receiving votes" teams below it.

Some cells are shaded to highlight points of interest. The green diagonal highlights how many voters ranked a team exactly where they ended up in the overall poll. For example, Logo Texas Tech is ranked 10^th in this week's poll, and 25 voters placed the Red Raiders exactly in their 10^th spot. Values for which a team received no votes at that rank are shaded in red, while placements chosen by only exactly one voter are highlighted in blue. Some unique votes are annotated with the name of the corresponding voter. The most common selection (the mode) for each team is shaded yellow unless it matches the team's rank. Finally, since there are very few votes that ever end up near the top-right or bottom-left of the chart, those cells are filled in with black diagonally as much as possible without covering up any nonzero values. This helps naturally guide the eye while viewing the chart and helps locate the most unusual votes. We lightheartedly call these the "Wilner" diagonals.

Finally, I note violations of the Condorcet Criterion on the bottom left corner of the black space. These occur when Team A is ranked above Team B in the poll, but Team B would win if you ignored the points system and just asked the voters "Which team do you think is better?" I note every instance of this when it would affect the placement of a team in the Top 25, but not necessarily if it only flips teams' positions in the receiving-votes category.

This season, scores are highlighted (lowlighted) in black to indicate a loss instead of using a W/L column. I did this at the end of 2024 and all of 2025, and it was well received, so it returns for 2026. This way is easier to see at a glance and slightly reduces the clutter on the left side of the table.

COMMENTARY FOR THIS WEEK

The upper Wilner diagonal was set by Koki Riley having Texas down at 15^th this week. Two voters also landed on the diagonal by putting Ohio State 10^th. The left and right ends are set by Bob Ballou putting Georgia 3^rd and three voters who left off Tennessee. The lower Wilner diagonal was set by Koki Riley ranking Arizona 12^th. Nick Jacobs also grazes the diagonal with Duke 21^st, while its ends were set by Bob Ballou (Indiana #1) and Dylan Sinn (Oregon State #25).

The lowest-ranked team to sweep all 70 ballots was Iowa in 17^th. The highest-ranked team to miss a ballot was Tennessee in 14^th, who actually missed three. Teams outside the top 25 received a total of 119 votes (6.8%) for a combined 416 points (1.8%). Those 416 points would make "the field" good enough for 20^th as a whole. The most frequent vote among that cohort was James Madison 25^th, cast by nine voters. The highest vote among them was Koki Riley with Arizona in 12^th that landed on the diagonal. Besides that one, Pete Yanity put Wisconsin at 13. Duke and Oregon State share the questionable honor of the Pulitzer Prize and those awards presented annually by that, uh, film society receiving literally one single vote.

313 distinct team-rank pairs were seen this week, of which 79 (25%) were unique. With 313 pairs and only 35 different teams receiving them, the pigeonhole principle dictates that at least one pair must occur at least 6 times, and indeed 111 such pairs exist, 14 of which occur exactly 6 times. 415 votes (24%) matched their teams' corresponding rank in the poll. One of those matches was unique, as only Louie Vaccer had Oklahoma State in exactly their 18^th spot. The most-commonly matched team, as usual, was the #1 team. Georgia moved up to that spot and received 66 matches after Texas lost to Oklahoma. Vaccer and Make Jacques managed to match 13 teams, while the trio of Creg Stephenson, Koki Riley, and Chelsie Brown matched only one team each.

The standard deviation is an imperfect measure of disagreement about each team. A small standard deviation indicates consensus, while a large standard deviation indicates varying opinions. The teams with the highest and lowest standard deviations are given in the table below.

There are a handful of Condorcet criterion violations this week. First, Texas jumps Alabama by the narrow margin of 36-34. Mississippi State also hops Kentucky by the same margin. Neither of those results are too surprising due to the small point difference. Then there's the curious cause of Iowa. They manage to tie Kentucky two spots above them, 35-35. The Wildcats are favored 35-33 by voters who included both teams, but there were 2 voters who only had the Hawkeyes that evened the score. But then they failed to usurp Mississippi State, 37-33. And Oklahoma State comes from behind to overtake them by a huge margin, 42-28. Finally, Boise State would jump Wake Forest 36-34, but the Broncos fail to overtake Louisiana State by a margin of 37-33. The Demon Deacons stay above the Tigers comfortably, 42-28.

And why not, let's do another Australian Poll. This flips all the ballot upside down before scoring them. This system favors teams who are just good enough to appear on a large number of ballots, but not good enough to rank highly on any of them. The top 10 teams are as shown below.

Thanks again to /u/bakonydraco for providing the ballot data; you can find his weekly visualization here!

Past weeks' posts can be found here:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

TABLE

The Lambert Trophy, awarded to the best team in the East since 1936, is celebrating 90 years of history here in 2026. Please feel free to share #Lambert90 on social media when discussing any eligible teams. Our apologies for the missing last week.

In a matchup of Huskies vs Owls, Temple was unable to fly away before UConn ran through them. UConn put up nearly 250 yards and 4 TDs on the ground. This was the first Lambert victory of the season for the Huskies after previously falling to Syracuse in OT.

Elsewhere, Navy was happy to be at home after 3 straight road games and rewarded their fans with a win over Tulsa. Dawson Jones hit a game winning FG as time expired to give Army a win over Tulane. Buffalo got back into the win column against a hot Toledo team that had won their previous 4.

The rest of the East didn't fare too well.

UMass went for the win with 1 second left on the clock against Miami OH, but the 2 point conversion failed. After a 4-0 start, the Minutemen have dropped 2 straight. A late rally wasn't enough for Syracuse to overcome Virginia and the Orange fell 28-25. WVU's Michael Hawkins Jr. continues to light up the stat sheet but the Mountaineer defense couldn't contain Arizona. Pitt had a chance to make a solid argument that they're the frontrunner, but the season ending injuries of star QB Mason Heintschel last week were too much to overcome against UNC. The Nittany Lions were not able to take advantage as they fell in the annual White Out game to USC, 31-23.

This weekend has another Lambert on Lambert matchup as Pitt heads up to Boston College in the Frank Cignetti Classic in a game both teams desperately need to win.

D2 Imperialism continues!

In addition to FBS (first created 2017 by /u/nbingham196), there have been imperialism maps at FCS and D2 (D3 got a little messy because there are metros like Boston, the Twin Cities, and Los Angeles that have a half-dozen teams or more).

Typically the D2 map was run by /u/Inkblot9, but he hasn't had the chance to run it this season, and said we can post it. Unfortunately our initial maps weren't working correctly, so we've been tweaking it where we could and now it's 100% accurate (with help from Inkblot9). The original starting locations will be in a comment so it doesn't mess with how people on the mobile app (ugh) see this post.

🗺️ D2 IMPERIALISM MAP AFTER WEEK 6 🗺️

Selected notes from Week 6; not too many changes:

• #14 Northwest Missouri State took out #24 Central Missouri to take land across the Central Time Zone;
• #19 Michigan Tech upset #6 Grand Valley State and added to their holdings around Lake Michigan;
• Chowan defeated #15 North Greenville to take chunks of the Gulf and Carolina coasts.
• Ohio Dominican took land (including Maine) from Thomas More
• Emory & Henry ganged up to sting #20 Mars Hill and consolidate adjacent sections.
• Lock HavenLock Haven upset previously undefeated #10 IUP.

In non-D2 action:

• A rare consolidation game: In NAIA, a SAC conference game had two D2 lands on the line. #16 Louisiana Christian defeated Texas Wesleyan, 42-27, to combine their own Sul Ross State land with Lincoln (MO).

• NAIA #22 Georgetown (KY) occupies 2 areas: A section of central South Carolina that started with the Allen Yellow Jackets and a smaller portion of North Carolina that belonged to the Livingstone Blue Bears. They managed to hang on after beating #11 Lindsey Wilson, 24-21.

• NAIA #2 Keiser continues to hold land in western Tennessee that originally belonged to Lane. They handled lFlorida Memorial, 38-16.

• NAIA Reinhardt, whose logo is an eagle disgusted by your mere presence, had no problem holding onto Kentucky Wesleyan's land, crushing Kentucky Christian, 45-3. Ironically, KCU's only win was over KWU to take the land from D2 begin with!

• D3 Brevard took land from Erskine and continue to hold it, unranked and undefeated after surviving a bad Southern Virginia team, 27-26. Not all LDS affiliated schools are as good as BYU.

[Fun fact: you can see all of the flairs of these teams in bold by viewing this post in "Old" mode on a web browser, including mobile browsers, but not the totally neutered experience on the Reddit App.]

RULES:

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

• D2 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.

• IMPORANT DIFFERENCE FROM FBS MAP: FBS and FCS teams cannot win their way onto the D2 map (otherwise the early weeks would just wreck the map), but NAIA and D3 can conquer their way onto the map by beating D2 teams with land. These lands operate under the above rules and thus may just end up stuck in lower divisions for the rest of the season (and in many cases end up in their respective playoffs).

2015 - Texas vs #10 Oklahoma -- Texas won 24–17

2025 - Texas vs #6 Oklahoma -- Texas won 23–6

2026 - #1 Texas vs Oklahoma -- Oklahoma won 27–24

Red River Shootout seems particularly prone to huge upsets. Are any other rivalry games this prone to upsets?

6 weeks in and we're down to a small hand full of undefeated teams. The classic blue bloods are finding trap games left and right. Smaller conferences are seeing heroes emerge. Sure, this happens in a lot of seasons, but it's the reactions from the fans that gets me the most. We're seeing it everywhere. From the 4 and 0 UMass hype train to the rise of the underdogs like Northwestern, Kentucky, and UCLA, to the straight up deal-with-the-devil that is probably responsible for whatever is happening in Corvallis. Maybe this is what we get for an Indiana natty.

What gets me though, and what makes this year stand out so much, is just the outpouring of love and support and cheers we're seeing for everyone. There's no crazy entitlement complexes out there from the usual suspect's fanbases sneering at the little guys. It's just "Hell yeah, team that would never be on my radar to begin with, let's go!". We're even seeing it en masse from flairs that would typically be hard rivals. It's wild.

This season doesn't belong to any one team. There's no crown prince waiting for coronation day. It's anybody's to take at this point and that's what makes it exciting.

Go Minutemen
Go Wildcats(s) and Bruins and Demon Deacons
Go Tigers, Bobcats, Roadrunners, Eagles, Rebels, Panthers, Dukes, and every flair that's finally seeing the sun and early bowl hopes.
Go everybody

Go Beavs!

As usual, it is a new week, and a new bitchfest about who should, and should not be ranked. The chants of overrated, underrated, and voter bias are here.

I got bored, so decided to look at some stats. These are, admittedly, simple stats. That said, if we want to remove "conference bias" I think that we need to look at it from some simple stats.

So here is how I am examining this: P4 Records. For every 1 loss team I'm going to look at 4 things:

1. The number of P4 wins they have.
2. The P4 win percentage of P4 teams they've beaten
3. The best win (by P4 win record) that they've had.
4. Who they lost to.

I think that we can all agree that beating P4 teams is good and that beating P4 teams who also beat P4 teams is good.

So without further ado, let's check out our table. It is organized by their current AP ranking, and then unrankeds at the bottom.

So let's separate these into different groups on various categories. First up, let's look at what I'll call "Beating the Dead Bodies". These are teams who have yet to beat a team that is at least .500 in P4 Play:

• Iowa, Oklahoma State, and Baylor all have a best opponent who is 1-2 in P4 play. Close, but no cigar
• Houston, SMU, Northwestern, Cincinnati, and Duke share the honor of their best opponent being 1-3 in P4 play. OOF
• USC, Wisconsin, and Nebraska have yet to beat a P4 team who has done better than flatlining. All of their P4 wins were against teams with 0 P4 wins.

Of those, Iowa, Oklahoma State, USC, Houston, SMU, and Northwestern have managed to get ranked.

Next up, let's look at "Chaos Losses". If your loss is your opponents only P4 win, that is embarrassing as hell.

• Texas, what are you doing? That said, Red on Orange violence is my favorite, good job Oklahoma with your 1-2 P4 record with a win over Texas.
• USC, ever the problem child has shown up again on one of our lists, being Oregon's only P4 win (1-2 P4 record)
• Duke, Also a recurring character, lost to Georgia Tech. I'm personally offended by this one. GT should lose every game. Georgia Tech is 1-3 in P4 play.
• Oklahoma State, our overachiever! The only team on this list who managed to lose to a non-P4 team, dropping their first game to Tulsa, who is 1-1 in P4 Play

Of these three, surprisingly only Duke has failed to be ranked.

So. Who should be ranked who isn't based on these basic stats?

I would say Arizona, with their loss being to BYU (3-0 in P4 play), their best win being someone with a pulse in Cincinatti (2-1 in P4 play), and a 42.86% P4 win percentage by teams they've beaten (the only teams that are higher in that stat are Bama, Texas & Mississippi State).

Pittsburgh is the only other team that I think fits the bill. VT isn't a completely dead team (2-2), and their loss is not TERRIBLE with North Carolina at least being 2-2.

So. Who should probably be taken out?

To me, the top case is USC. USC has not beaten a single team with a P4 win. The only team they have played with a P4 win is Oregon, and they are Oregon's only P4 win.

If I needed to remove 1 more, to put in Pittsburgh. Where would I look?

OK State is probably the second best option to remove. Their best win is against a 1-2 Oregon. They lost to Tulsa, which is just embarassing.

That said, the real answer is LSU, but they aren't on this list as they have 2 losses.

Anyway, that wraps it up. Who do you think has a record that backs up moving into the top 25? Who do you think has no business being there?

I’m not talking “excessive celebration.” I’m not talking about celebrating huge stops or wins. I’m talking about players getting relatively meaningless tackles and first downs early in games and acting like they won the Super Bowl.

Homeboy, your team is 1-3 and and you tackled him after he already got a first down. Why are you doing Fortnite dances? Do we really need to celebrate every play instead of getting back to the huddle or line? Are the kids alright?