Halloween is still six days away, and undefeated teams are dropping like flies in college football. With No. 2 BYU's loss to UCF and No. 8 Texas Tech's loss to Cincinnati, just three unbeatens remain in FBS, a historic low. The last time major college football had only three undefeated teams through Oct. 24 was in 1977.
I'd let you guess which teams those were, but we might be here all week, and I have another full slate of action to cover on Saturday. Through Oct. 24, 1977, Texas was sitting at 6-0, and its unblemished brethren were Colgate (7-0) and Louisiana Tech (4-0-2). So, yes, it's extremely rare to have this much carnage at this point in the season.
The only three teams with a zero in the loss column are Miami, Utah and UCLA. The Hurricanes are a serious candidate to run the table -- at least in the regular season, but the other two are much more vulnerable. After notching a top-25 win over Houston late Saturday night, Utah must travel to Cincinnati, which just handed Texas Tech its first loss of the season.
After that, it's Holy War time as BYU visits Salt Lake City. The Bruins are playing with a backup quarterback for the rest of the season, and they still have to visit Minnesota and Michigan before hosting USC. It's a manageable path for UCLA, but the loss of Nico Iamaleava reduces the team's margin for error on a weekly basis.
If you think all three of those remaining unbeatens will get through the rest of the season unscathed, you haven't been watching much college football in 2026. In fact, there's a chance we don't have any undefeated teams if Miami loses to Notre Dame on Nov. 7. All this parity is setting up for a wild November filled with neck-and-neck conference races and maddening College Football Playoff debates.
We've already seen 2007-level insanity, and there's still one week of games left before the first College Football Playoff rankings are unveiled on Tuesday, Nov. 3. The race for the playoffs is officially wide open because as small as the number of undefeated teams is, the list of one-loss teams is shrinking rapidly too. There are only 16 teams with one or fewer losses on their resumes, and just 12 of those reside in a Power Four conference.
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