Miami Climbs to No. 1, BYU to No. 2 in AP Poll's Wildest Week

Miami is No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 2002, and BYU climbed to No. 2 for its highest ranking since the 1984 national championship season, according to the AP poll released Sunday and reported by ESPN.

Five of the top seven teams in the poll lost during the week — a first in the AP poll's 90-year history, per ESPN's report on the poll data.

Why did Miami jump to No. 1?

Miami moved up two spots after beating rival Florida State in double overtime to stay unbeaten, according to ESPN. The Hurricanes received 40 of the 70 first-place votes from the media panel that compiles the poll, the outlet reported. The last time Miami held the top spot, the 2002 season ended with a loss to Ohio State in the national championship game, per ESPN's account of the program's history.

Miami's rise was made possible by Georgia's fall. The Bulldogs had been No. 1 for one week before losing at home to Auburn, an unranked opponent, ESPN reported. That made Georgia the second top-ranked team in as many weeks to lose to an unranked team — Texas was the other, according to the same report.

How did BYU reach No. 2?

BYU's climb to No. 2 ties back to an upset of Notre Dame, which ESPN covered separately in its report on BYU coach Kalani Sitake's reaction to the win. The No. 2 ranking is BYU's best since the 1984 season, when the Cougars won the national championship, according to ESPN's poll coverage.

The finish of that Notre Dame-BYU game drew its own scrutiny. The Big 12 acknowledged an error in how the game ended and said Notre Dame should have had one more second on the clock, according to ESPN reporter Adam Rittenberg's separate story referenced in the same poll coverage. Notre Dame nonetheless remained in the top five of the poll, per ESPN.

Which other top-seven teams lost?

ESPN's report counts five of the top seven teams losing in the same week, a figure the outlet attributes to the AP poll's 90-year record. Georgia's home loss to Auburn and Texas's earlier loss to an unranked team are the two specific examples cited in the ESPN account as evidence of the pattern of high seeds losing to teams without a ranking.

Notre Dame and Georgia both lost close games during the week but stayed inside the top five of the poll released Sunday, according to ESPN. The outlet did not specify the exact margins of those losses in the portion of the poll story reviewed here, so no scores are cited beyond what is confirmed: both games were close and both teams retained top-five standing.

How does Miami's No. 1 ranking compare with its 2002 run?

The only reference point ESPN provides for Miami's prior No. 1 ranking is the 2002 season, which ended with a loss in the national championship game to Ohio State. That means the current Miami team's No. 1 ranking arrives 24 years after the program last held the top spot, based on the year cited in ESPN's report.

No win-loss record, scoring margin, or strength-of-schedule metric for the current Miami team appears in the portion of the ESPN story reviewed here, so none of those figures can be reported.

What does Ohio State's position in the poll show?

ESPN's report places Ohio State in a tightly bunched top three alongside Miami and BYU, without specifying Ohio State's exact rank number in the excerpt reviewed. The description of a "tightly bunched top three" is the only comparative detail available from the source material, and it is attributed directly to ESPN's poll write-up.

The poll's broader churn — five of the top seven teams losing in one week — sets a benchmark that ESPN says has not occurred before in the 90-year history of the AP poll. That figure, along with the Miami and BYU ranking milestones, forms the core data points verified against the original ESPN story. Any additional win totals, point spreads, or vote-count breakdowns beyond the 40-of-70 first-place-vote figure for Miami are not available in the material reviewed for this report.

The full AP Top 25 breakdown, including the Big 12's statement on the Notre Dame-BYU finish, is available in ESPN's original coverage.