Inside the AP Poll: Notre Dame-BYU, Alabama-Kentucky's head-to-head results should matter

Do games matter? Should the result of a contest we all watched with our own eyes be considered when comparing two teams directly to one another?

According to most of my fellow AP Top 25 voters, I guess the answers are ... no ... and no.

I’m genuinely disappointed to see that most voters dropped BYU behind Notre Dame (despite beating them a week ago in Provo) after the Cougars lost at UCF in double overtime. Are they not aware of the fact that both BYU and Notre Dame are now 6-1? And very, very recently played one another, making it a good indication of the current state of both teams? That — even if power ratings or Vegas would have the Irish favored over the Cougars if they played next weekend on a neutral field — we still have an actual, tangible example of what happened when these two teams played that we can take into account?

Ohio State replaces BYU at No. 2 in AP Top 25; Miami only team to hold its spot in poll

A week after five of the top seven teams lost, three more top-10 teams went down Saturday to make it 10 in the last three weeks.

• Associated Press,

Notre Dame doesn't have any impressive wins to date. Only just now — because Wisconsin beat USC at home and snuck into the Top 25 at No. 25 — do the Irish have a top-25 win on their resume! It's OK to wait and see what happens when they play Miami and SMU before deciding, oh gosh, Notre Dame is definitely better than BYU a week after it lost to that exact team.

The same thing happened with Alabama and Kentucky. It’s always a bad look when teams are sitting side-by-side in the official poll in the opposite order of a game result. We all remember Alabama beat Kentucky, right? The score was 45-17. It was close for a half, and then all the sudden it wasn’t close at all.

But I guess because my peers are — in this case — obsessed with the fact that Kentucky has a 1 in the loss column and Alabama has a 2, they’ve decided these teams aren’t close enough for a head-to-head result to come into play when comparing them? Come on. I love what Will Stein is building at Kentucky. I’ve been shouting from the rooftops since he got hired that it was one of my favorite hires.

The Wildcats really do have a shot to get to the College Football Playoff this season — but we can’t ignore a four-touchdown difference. Not with a resume that includes just one win over teams currently ranked in the Top 25. I know the Texas A&M and LSU wins looked more impressive at the time (as both teams were top-10 squads at the time of the game), but we can’t award extra credit based on wrong preseason prognostications. And Alabama has two “good” losses. The Tide have a compelling case to be the top two-loss team in the country — a case I support.

Kentucky will certainly have opportunities to build a resume far stronger than what Alabama’s got; the Wildcats go to Tennessee in two weeks, then face Florida and Missouri in back-to-back weeks. Those three teams are all currently ranked, and at least one is expected to be in the mix for the CFP down the stretch. But right now, Kentucky’s wins aren’t enough to clearly categorize them differently than Alabama — so the head-to-head result should matter.

This philosophy applies, in my mind, to Texas-Ole Miss-LSU ordering as well. I put them in head-to-head order, as did my fellow voters. They just didn’t stay consistent throughout the rest of their ballots!

Stray thoughts/observations:

• As someone who has had Wisconsin on her ballot for at least half of the season so far, I’m happy to see the Badgers finally break into the Top 25. Their two losses are to two teams currently ranked in the top 7!
• I didn’t drop Houston at all after its loss at Utah. Those teams were very even for much of the game, and Rice-Eccles is such a difficult place to play. I know the Cougs now have two losses (to teams that will probably box them out of a chance to play in the Big 12 title game) but that’s still a good football team.
• I fixed my ballot this week and included Arizona. I am still kicking myself for not having them in my Top 25 a week ago. The Wildcats are going to have a big say in the Big 12 race down the stretch — they’ve got trips to Texas Tech and Utah coming up in the next three weeks.

Takeaways from College Football Week 8: Season of chaos continues with Big 12 Upsets

Week 8 absolutely delivered, with the No. 2 team in the nation falling on the road to UCF — which was far from the only field storm of the weekend!

• Nicole Auerbach,