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It’s going to be hard to look back and not think Week 7 was the wildest and most chaotic of the season, from the early news of College Football Playoff expansion going into Saturday all the way through five of the top seven teams in the AP poll losing games for the first time ever. Despite that, there were only a handful of programs who saw their postseason hopes extinguish completely—hooray for tiebreakers!—even as a great swath of teams entered life support with their playoff chances thanks to some ill-advised losses.
With all that in mind, it’s time to examine just what the impact of all those results from the past weekend will have by entering The Eliminator—where we’re cutting teams and seeing which ones still have (an often mathematical) chance to play for the national title. Here’s where the field stands after Week 7.
Zero teams (0% of the bracket)
50 teams, 36% of FBS
88 teams, 64% of FBS
Fourteen of the conference’s 17 teams have two or fewer losses right now in league play so the ability to get an automatic bid remains alive and well for a good chunk of teams for one more week. That will certainly change, but is one reason why Duke, Pitt, Virginia and a few others remain clinging to hope when it comes to making it to Charlotte and pulling an upset to make the bracket.
Just as we all expected going into late October, the Big 12 is home to three of the five undefeated teams in the country and a total of four of the top 15 in the polls. The league got a huge boost on Saturday with a marquee nonconference victory by BYU over Notre Dame. The Cougars and Texas Tech don’t play each other in the regular season, so there’s a much better chance at the Big 12 landing two teams in the field no matter what might transpire in the conference title game.
Kenny Dillingham remains one of the sport’s bright young coaches, but his Sun Devils have been dreadful on defense this season as they’ve seen any hopes of a return to the Big 12 title game evaporate before Halloween. ASU has allowed 125 points in just three conference games to drop to .500 on the season, which is more than all but one other program (West Virginia, which has played four league games). The Bearcats are only slightly better and spoiled a game where they had 622 yards and 42 points on offense in what turned out to be a CFP-ending loss.
Eleven teams in the Big Ten still have two or fewer overall losses and the list of programs still alive for a trip to Indianapolis is even longer at this point. Though it was a chaotic weekend across the sport, that wasn’t the case in Tony Petitti’s dominion even as Indiana’s long winning streak came to a close by a few inches against Ohio State.
One hates to acknowledge some of the propaganda coming out of the SEC office but this past Saturday was another good example at this being the deepest conference in the country where anyone can beat anyone on a given weekend. While it was far from a fatal set of losses by potential CFP contenders such as Alabama, Mississippi State, Missouri and Texas, it does put their playoff chances on really thin ice. It doesn’t help that it looks far more likely that the Big 12 and Big Ten have more contenders for the 12-team field at this point than you would expect, but such a development may also be part of the reason why the SEC has come around on a 24-team CFP.
John Mateer went full John Mateer in a loss to Kentucky at home to spoil all those positive vibes from Red River the week prior. The Sooners have a dreadful nonconference loss to a stumbling Michigan team sinking their at-large hopes and will lose a number of key tiebreakers in most scenarios even if they do win out and somehow have a shot at Atlanta. There are larger existential questions about the program moving forward that Brent Venables and his new athletic director will have to answer should there be more losses like the one against the Wildcats.
Irish fans who made the trip to Provo, Utah, (and even those who didn’t) are right to be upset about the final seconds against BYU, especially because that loss makes the game against Miami all but a must-win from a CFP perspective. If they don’t beat the Hurricanes in South Bend next month, they could very well finish without a single Top 25 win.
It was a big week around the American with the announcement that James Madison was joining in the future, but less positive on the field for the league. Memphis remains in the hunt to win the conference but winning out and looking impressive is about the only way they will still be considered for the Group of 6 bid after one of the most inexplicable games of the season at Tulane saw them completely unable to hold onto the football. Elsewhere, UTSA might just have solidified its case as the favorite following a win over Navy.
The good news for Zach Kittley is the Owls look much improved this season and should be headed to a bowl game for the first time since 2020. The bad news is that effort against Army in a blowout loss underscored that they’re done when it comes to their faint Group of 6 hopes.
Some fourth-quarter defensive lapses made that win over Central Michigan look much closer than it should have been, even if the Broncos completed only five passes in an effort that was much more akin to a service academy victory. Still, they’re hanging around the Group of 6 discussion going into a pivotal contest at Toledo that could determine a spot in Detroit.
It’s a massive weekend in the Mountain West ahead and you kind of wonder if that weighed on the teams still in contention during Week 7. The Lobos struggled during their trip to the islands in a close win over Hawai‘i, the Falcons had a fourth quarter for the ages to upset UNLV and even the Bison found unique ways of scoring in order to hold off Nevada. Still, staying alive is staying alive.
It was a fairly quiet Saturday for the Pac-12 with the Broncos off and Oregon State trouncing Washington State with ease. All signs point to at least two meetings between the old school Beavers and one of the league’s most notable newcomers next month with many CFP implications riding on both contests.
What a week it was for the Dukes, who announced a big move to the American, put a further stranglehold on the Sun Belt East Division with a big win over Georgia State and kept up the pressure on Boise State and New Mexico in the Group of 6 race.
For all the improvement we’ve seen out of the Panthers this season, pulling the road upset of an established program like James Madison was probably asking a little too much. While that 49–22 loss showed how much further there is to go for the program, the fact that it’s mid-October and we were even discussing Georgia State in this kind of CFP conversation is a testament to the turnaround which has taken place in Atlanta in 2026.
PODCAST: Listen to Sports Illustrated’s college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, hosted by Pat Forde, on Apple and. Watch the show on SI’s college YouTube channel or on SI TV.
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