When you spend all week discussing the ranked-on-ranked matchups on the college football schedule, you just know a shake-up is coming to the college football rankings. Yes, with a half-dozen games between teams ranked in the AP Top 25 poll, we are likely to see one of our biggest weeks of upheaval, and the changes come not just as a result of those top-tier collisions but also from unexpected upsets that are going to challenge voters' preseason positions on top teams. There will be a rankings shift after Florida toppled Ole Miss and Oregon picked up a road win at USC.
But Week 4 also saw Penn State and Louisville lose to unranked teams at home, and reigning champion Indiana survive an upset scare. All of it provides necessary information for AP voters as they negotiate the final spots on their ballots, which will be submitted on Sunday for the new college football rankings. The headline change in a week of change is going to be Florida's rise after a 52-28 win against No. 4 Ole Miss in The Swamp.
The Gators found the end zone fast and early, riding star running back Jadan Baugh to the signature win of the early Jon Sumrall era. The presence of Sumrall as a Year 1 coach in Gainesville sets the stage for Florida's return to the top of the sport, as he's already set to put the program in a position it hasn't seen since the Dan Mullen era. We project a rise for Florida from No. 21 up to the top 10, which would mark the Gators' first top-10 ranking in the AP poll since September 2021.
For all the hand-wringing about what Florida could and could not accomplish over the last four years, Sumrall has hit the ground running and immediately delivered a product that meets their championship standard. Elsewhere in the rankings, we will find some fallout from that result on the Ole Miss side, plus some two-way movement after Oregon's road win at USC. Because after a couple of weeks with stagnant positions in the poll, Week 4 and the arrival of conference play have finally provided some real results that spark debates and make things interesting up and down the top 25.
Here's how we think the new AP Top 25 poll will look on Sunday after Week 4 scores and results in college football: 1. Texas (Last week — 1): The Longhorns' performance was far from flawless and at times offensive, but ultimately surviving a tough SEC road test with a win against ranked Tennessee shouldn't dislodge them from the No. 1 spot. The collection of first-place votes (58-of-69) may start to wane, but there's not another obvious contender for the top spot set to topple Texas as long as the team continues to win. 2.
Georgia (2): We finally got to see Gunner Stockton and the Georgia offense face some real resistance against Oklahoma's defense, but the total competition in all three phases of the game was so heavily slanted towards the Bulldogs it didn't even matter. Stockton had more incompletions (11) than he had totaled in the first three games combined (7), but the team still scored 41 points and won by four touchdowns against a quality SEC opponent. That speaks to not only the high level of play from a hungry Kirby Smart team, but also the depth of the offensive woes for Oklahoma here in this first month of the season. 3.
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