Here’s how the Power Five stacks up following a wild week in college football.
Week 7 of the 2017 college football regular season was filled with utter chaos, leading to huge changes both to conference title races and the playoff picture.
With no matchups between ranked teams on the schedule, week seven appeared to have one of the lighter slates on the schedule heading in. Instead, the weekend provided a reminder of just how hard it is to go undefeated in college football, as four top 10 teams went down over the span of 24 hours with several other contenders narrowly escaping.
Friday night set the tone before the weekend’s action began in earnest with the defending national champion Clemson Tigers falling 27-24 to the Syracuse Orange at the Carrier Dome. Hours later, the undefeated Washington State Cougars were thoroughly dominated by the California Golden Bears in Berkeley, just one week after earning a triumphant win over USC.
The chaos spilled over into Saturday, with the Auburn Tigers blowing a 20-point lead en route to a loss in Death Valley to LSU. Pac-12 After Dark claimed its second victim to cap off the weekend, as the Washington Huskies’ offense sputtered in a 13-7 loss to Washington State.
As expected, week eight’s conference power rankings look significantly different, with the Pac-12 and ACC plummeting. Meanwhile, the gap between the Big Ten and SEC to the rest of the country is growing, as both conferences have at least a shot of getting two teams to the College Football Playoff.
Here’s how the college football Power Five stacks up heading into week 8.