19 Double-Digit Upsets Mark College Football's Chaotic Week 8

Nineteen teams have lost as double-digit favorites in conference play this season, with five weeks of the regular season still to go, according to ESPN's Bill Connelly. Last season's full total was 25. The pace of upsets through Week 8 has left Connelly, and much of the sport, trying to sort signal from noise.

What is the headline finding from Week 8?

Connelly reported that for three consecutive weeks, a team ranked in the Associated Press top two has lost to an unranked opponent: No. 1 Texas fell to Oklahoma in Week 6, No. 1 Georgia lost to Auburn in Week 7, and No. 2 BYU lost to UCF in Week 8. He found only one prior stretch with that pattern — the 2007 season, which he called "the role model for all chaos years." That comparison, he noted, nearly extended to nine straight weeks in 2007, underscoring how rare the current run is even by historical standards.

On a single Saturday, Connelly counted five ranked teams — Nos. 2, 8, 11, 15 and 16 — losing to unranked opponents, with No. 6 nearly joining them. No. 7 lost outright to a lower-ranked team, and No. 10 came close to the same fate.

How reliable is the method behind these rankings?

Connelly's analysis leans on the AP poll and week-over-week scoreboard results rather than a single predictive model, which means the "trust" framework is observational: it tracks which ranked teams actually lost, to whom, and how often, rather than forecasting outcomes in advance. That approach captures what happened cleanly, but it carries the same uncertainty any small-sample, mid-season read does — a few results either way could change which teams look stable versus shaky by December.

Why do the BYU and Texas Tech losses carry extra weight?

The timing stood out. In Week 7, BYU had just beaten Notre Dame, and Texas Tech had, in Connelly's words, played "its most complete game of the season." One week later, both lost to teams that had each dropped back-to-back Big 12 games. Tennessee presented a similar whiplash: after beating Alabama in Week 7, the Volunteers lost in Week 8 to a team Alabama had beaten by 31 points, Connelly reported.

Texas offered a partial counterexample. Ole Miss had blown out Missouri, which had blown out Florida, which had beaten Texas earlier in the season — a chain that, by transitive logic, favored Ole Miss. Instead, Texas built an early lead and held on for what Connelly described as a season-saving win, muddying any clean reading of strength-of-schedule chains this fall.

What does the broader upset count suggest about trust in rankings?

Citing The Athletic's Jason Kirk, Connelly noted the sport is approaching Halloween with only three unbeaten FBS teams, the fewest at this point in a season since 2003. Combined with the double-digit-favorite losses — 19 so far against 25 for all of last season — the data points toward a season where preseason and in-season rankings are holding up worse than usual, at least through eight weeks.

Connelly did not frame this as proof that rankings are meaningless, only that the margin for confidence has narrowed. "I would say we should batten down the hatches, but it's too late. The storm is here," he wrote, a line that captures the uncertainty running through his analysis more than any specific prediction.

What should fans watch going forward?

• Whether the three remaining unbeaten teams can hold that status through November, given how few survived this long in 2003.
• Whether double-digit upsets in conference play finish above last season's full-year total of 25, which would require only six more such results in five weeks.
• Whether the AP top two avoids a fourth straight week of losing to an unranked opponent, which would have no known precedent in the data Connelly cited.
• How the College Football Playoff selection committee weighs résumés built on inconsistent results like Texas's win over Ole Miss despite the transitive loss chain.

Where can readers follow the full breakdown?

Connelly's complete team-by-team assessment, including specific trust rankings for conferences and individual programs, is available in his original ESPN analysis.