Notre Dame just won’t go away. The Fighting Irish are up to No. 10 in the latest US LBM Coaches Poll, and yeah, nobody saw this coming after they face-planted with an 0-2 start. Six straight wins later, here they are. Meanwhile the top 10 got interesting in all the wrong places for some teams—Miami tanked, the Big 12 crashed the party, and college football did what it does best: made everyone’s predictions look stupid.
Ohio State and Indiana are still running things at 1-2. The Buckeyes grabbed 60 of 64 first-place votes after beating down Penn State, which surprised exactly nobody. But scroll down a bit and things get weird fast. Week 10 turned into a bloodbath for teams that thought they were safe.
The Buckeyes looked terrifying against Penn State. Just absolutely dominant. They’re getting those first-place votes because they should—this team’s got that playoff favorite look. Indiana snagged one vote too after crushing Maryland, and look, the Hoosiers aren’t a fluke anymore. Stop waiting for them to collapse.
Texas A&M stayed at No. 3 without playing, which tells you how much chaos there was below them. They got the other three first-place nods. Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, Mississippi—all stayed where they were from No. 1 through No. 7. When the upper portion doesn’t move, you know the real story’s happening somewhere else. The Big Ten leaders have basically separated themselves from the pack.
That 0-2 start was supposed to kill Notre Dame’s season. Remember all those takes? The Fighting Irish just kept winning anyway. Now they’ve moved up two spots after their sixth win in a row, and suddenly people are nervous about playing them. This isn’t lucky—they fixed whatever was broken in September.
The slow climb made sense. You don’t jump from disaster to top 10 overnight. But each win looked better than the last, and now they’re back in the conversation. Other teams with those consecutive wins get talked about as dangerous. Notre Dame earned that label the hard way.
Brigham Young moved to No. 8. Texas Tech hit No. 9. And because college football loves drama, they play next week. One of these Big 12 programs is about to prove they belong, and the other’s going to drop like a rock. This conference matchup matters way more than anyone thought it would back in August.
Texas Tech getting into the top 10 wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card a month ago. But here they are as a legitimate Big 12 representative with a real shot at making noise. Brigham Young climbed up while everyone else was busy losing. These two teams meeting this early might be the best game nobody’s talking about yet. The winner stays in the poll’s elite group. The loser? Well, we’ll see.
Virginia leads the ACC now at No. 11. Let that sink in. They survived some road trip out in California and somehow ended up as the conference’s best hope. Georgia Tech dropped six places to No. 14 after losing at North Carolina State—their first loss all year, and it came at the absolute worst time.
But Miami? Oof. They fell nine positions to No. 18 after losing to SMU, their second league loss. The Hurricanes went from playoff locks to complete question marks. Meanwhile Oklahoma and Texas both jumped six places each—No. 12 and 13—because they actually beat ranked teams from the SEC. Funny how that works. Win big games, move up. Lose games you should win, fall hard. Conference losses hurt, but losing away from home is becoming a death sentence this season.
Southern California snuck back in at No. 21. They’re not blowing anyone away, but wins count. Iowa jumped in at No. 24 right before hosting Oregon, which is either brilliant timing or they’re about to get embarrassed on national TV. Cincinnati’s barely hanging at No. 25 after Utah (sitting at No. 19) beat them up pretty good. They’re this close to becoming the week’s dropouts.
Houston and Navy fell out completely. That’s how fast things change. One bad weekend and you’re watching from outside looking in with all the other unranked teams. The rankings after Week 10 are brutal like that. Teams that were feeling safe last week are scrambling now. There’s no such thing as a comfortable spot anymore, and with games getting tougher, we’re probably going to see more chaos before this thing’s over. Every team remaining in the top 25 knows they’re one slip-up away from joining the dropouts.