playBill ConnellyOct 18, 2026, 05:05 PM ETCloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsIf you’re a fan of college football chaos, there are certain seasons you hold in high regard. The 2007 season is the gold standard, of course, but 1996 is another great vintage — Arizona State came within a play of the national title, after all.
The 1990 season ranks awfully high with that whole “Virginia was No. 1, 18 teams made top-five appearances, and the most impactful play was a fifth down” thing. The 1984 season was spectacular too, with BYU winning the title and six teams ranking No. 1 and 25 landing in the top 10 at some point.Saturday gave us both the most high-profile matchups of the season and the wildest set of results. And if you’re looking for chaos season vibes, check this out:• The last time Alabama, Georgia and Texas all lost on the same day was in 1996.• The last time No. 1 teams fell to unranked opponents in back-to-back weeks was 1990.• The last time three AP No. 1 teams had lost by Oct. 17 was 1990.• The time before that with three No. 1s going down that early? 1984.• The last time five of the top seven teams lost on the same day? NEVER!
And it would have been more if No. 3 Miami took the hint and lost to upset-minded Florida State! No. 11 Utah almost joined in as well!Saturday was one of the most chaotic days the sport has ever seen, one-upping even some of the chaos greats. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Let’s take a look back at the day’s most impactful results and how they came about.
No. 4 Ohio State 19, No. 5 Indiana 15In Friday’s preview, I mentioned how third and fourth downs were Indiana’s superpower in 2025 — the Hoosiers won 76% of them during their national title run and won 59% in an otherwise dead-even Big Ten championship game win over Ohio State. It appeared that superpower was on the wane this fall, especially in their narrow escape against Nebraska last week, but if they could win the key plays Saturday in Bloomington, they would have a chance at a slight upset against Ohio State.Once again, the overall stats from this game were about as dead even as possible. Indiana made more disruptive plays, which Ohio State offset in part with a field position advantage. The outcome once again came down to third and fourth downs; IU managed a narrow victory on third downs, but fourth downs made all the difference.Fourth down No. 1: Julian Sayin completes a 2-yard touchdown pass to Bo Jackson with 10 seconds left in the first half to put the Buckeyes up 10-7.
Sayin had misfired terribly earlier in the goal-to-go situation, but when four IU defenders converge on Jeremiah Smith, there was no one left to cover Jackson.Fourth down No. 2: Down 13-7 with 9:05 left in the third quarter and facing fourth-and-4 from the OSU 38 — no man’s land for a field goal attempt — IU goes for it, but Josh Hoover is sacked by an unblocked Jaylen McClain and fumbles. Tarvos Alford recovers for Ohio State.Fourth down No. 3: With 12:52 left in the game, Sayin goes deep to Smith after a play fake on fourth-and-1 from the IU 38. This time Indiana has only multiple defenders around Smith, not four of them, and he makes a surprisingly easy catch to put the Buckeyes up 19-7.Fourth down No. 4: It’s a game of inches, friends.Josh Hoover finds Nick Marsh – BUT HE’S OUT OF BOUNDS https://t.co/WCcs1mUefF— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) October 17, 2026 Four plays essentially made a three-touchdown difference in a 4-point game.With Sayin looking at being out for “several weeks,” according to coach Ryan Day, Ohio State needed this one quite a bit more than Indiana. Suffering a second loss and then immediately having to start freshman Luke Fahey for a while would have been an awfully dicey proposition.
Plenty of challenges remain for the Buckeyes: Fahey’s first start will be a cross-country road game against USC, followed by home games against a desperate Oregon and annoying-as-hell (complimentary) Northwestern, then a road trip to Nebraska and The Game vs. Michigan. But the team has a bye week to prep Fahey, and facing this stretch at 6-1 is a lot more fun than facing it at 5-2.As for Indiana, well, winning streaks end. The Hoosiers literally came within inches of beating one of the most talented teams in the country, but every team loses games like this at some point.
We don’t really know how the Hoosiers will respond to a loss because it’s been almost two years since they’ve had to, but for whatever it’s worth, after their last regular-season loss (at Ohio State in 2024), they turned around and beat Purdue 66-0. Heading to Michigan isn’t the easiest rebound trip in the world, though, especially if what we saw from freshman quarterback Tommy Carr late in the Wolverines’ Saturday win over Penn State was real and sustainable. No. 8 BYU 28, No. 2 Notre Dame 24I’m admittedly getting really, really sick of clock errors — this seems like one of the most obvious things a replay system could avoid, but we seem to be getting worse and worse at avoiding it.That said, BYU’s defense was dynamite all night against Notre Dame, holding the Irish to a 38.0% success rate* after they averaged 53.6% through their first six games (third in the country heading into Week 7). The odds of the Cougars stopping one more Irish play and still coming away with the win were solid.End-of-game controversy aside, BYU proved its top-10 bona fides by beautifully taking the fight to an opponent that, for nearly a season and a half, has played like a top-five team. (Yes, I know Notre Dame’s recent schedules have been pretty light.
I’m not here to relitigate that. We can adjust for strength of schedule, and the Irish have dominated every recent opponent like a top-five team would.)It took a pair of BYU turnovers — a muffed punt midway through the third quarter and an interception midway through the fourth (nearly Bear Bachmeier’s only mistake in the biggest game of his career) — for the Irish to even have a chance because they lost a lot more plays than they won overall. The Cougars had a nearly 10-percentage-point advantage in success rate (47.8% to 38.0%) and more than double the advantage in the red zone (64.3% to 30.0%). They narrowly won the run game battle despite being without injured RB LJ Martin, and they pressured CJ Carr constantly, even if, to the Irish QB’s credit, he escaped most of it.BYU also scored one for the Big 12.
As I mentioned last week, the Big 12 has an average SP+ rating (9.2) far closer to the Big Ten’s (9.9) than the ACC’s (5.2). Heading into Week 7, the conference boasted three of the country’s eight remaining power-conference unbeatens. But those unbeatens ranked only eighth (BYU), 10th (Texas Tech) and 11th (Utah) in last week’s AP poll. Now they’re second (BYU), eighth (Tech) and 10th (Utah), and BYU got 20 first-place votes.
And with Houston moving up to 14th after a quality win over Oklahoma State, the Big 12 has more top-14 teams than the Big Ten.BYU has to avoid a major letdown opportunity, traveling to Florida to face a defensively tricky UCF team in the Bounce House. But for now the Cougars have earned honor for their conference and their highest ranking since winning the national title 42 years ago.(*Success rate: how frequently an offense is gaining 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second or 100% on third or fourth.) Auburn 27, No. 1 Georgia 24It was easy enough to assume that teams such as Indiana, Notre Dame and Alabama might be in some trouble Saturday — they were all playing top-15 teams, after all. But Georgia had been the most stable and trustworthy team in the country entering the weekend, and the Dawgs were hosting an Auburn team that hadn’t really gotten its offense going in 2026. This was not a game I felt I would need to pay much attention to, and that was reinforced when the Dawgs went up 14-0 withi
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