Duke, Colorado crash new Top 25 after Labor Day weekend upsets
Duke (No. 21) and Colorado (No. 22) moved into the Associated Press Top 25 college football poll after scoring the biggest upsets of the opening weekend of the season and No. 4 Florida State jumped into the top five after its resounding victory against LSU in Week 1’s marquee game.
Georgia remained No. 1 with 58 first-place votes and Michigan held steady at No. 2 with two first-place votes.
No. 3 Alabama moved up a spot and Florida State climbed four places and received the remaining three first-place votes after beating LSU, 45-24. The Seminoles are in the top five for the first time since the beginning of the 2017 season.
Ohio State rounded out the top five.
But the biggest stories were found in the newcomers.
Colorado’s victory as a three-touchdown underdog at TCU in coach Deion’s Sanders debut was the story of the weekend, and now the Buffaloes are ranked for the first time since a brief stay in 2020. The Buffaloes were also ranked for two weeks in 2018, but have only finished a season in the Top 25 once (2016) in the last 20 seasons.
Sanders, the former NFL star and Florida State AllAmerican, took over a team that went 1-11 last season and did an unprecedented roster makeover, with 87 new players, 58 of them transfers. The new-look Buffs came away with a 45-42 victory on the road against the program that played in the national title game last season.
The rest of the top 10 was Southern California at No. 6, followed by Penn State, Washington, Tennessee and Notre Dame.
Pitt received eight points and was sixth among “Others receiving votes.”
Fellow ACC member Duke capped the long Labor Day weekend by knocking off Clemson 28-7 on Monday night in Durham, N.C. — the Blue Devils’ first victory against a team ranked in the top 10 since 1989 against a Clemson team ranked seventh.
In Year 2 under coach Mike Elko, perennial basketball powerhouse Duke is ranked for the first time in the AP college football poll since a oneweek stint in 2018.
That season was also the last time Florida State made an appearance in the preseason Top 25. The Seminoles faded that year, slipping into the worst stretch the program has had since the 1970s.
Clemson
The numbers told how stunning was Duke’s 28-7 victory against then-No 9 Clemson Monday. Until Clemson, no top-10 team had lost an opener to an unranked team by 11-plus points since at least 2000. It had been a long time, too, since the Tigers had been held out of double-digits by an ACC opponent (72 consecutive games). What was most jarring was that three different times Clemson drove inside the Duke 10-yard line — as far as the 1 on two of the possessions — and didn’t score.
“We’re not entitled to win,” Clemsoncoach Dabo Swinney said. “We’ve got to go earn it. And we had plenty of opportunity to get control of that game on multiple occasions and we just didn’t. And that’s how you get beat.”
Quarterback Riley Leonard, Jaquez Moore and Jordan Waters scored rushing touchdowns for Duke, which was outgained by the Tigers, 422-374.