Michigan is 19th, and the team it beat to get there is 24th
The AP poll released Sunday put Michigan back in the top 25 at 19th with 382 points, three places and 336 points below where it started the season. Oklahoma fell 13 places to 24th in the same ballot. Five ranked teams are still on Michigan's schedule, and they are worth 1,244 fewer poll points than they were a week ago.
Michigan spent Saturday beating the 11th-ranked team in the country. It spent Sunday watching that win get cheaper.
The Associated Press poll released Sunday afternoon put Michigan back in the top 25 at 19th, a week after Michigan was the only team in the country to fall out of the poll, having won its game. Oklahoma, the win that got it back in, dropped 13 places to 24th in the same ballot.
Both numbers came out of the same afternoon. A résumé is built out of the second one as much as the first.
Michigan is ranked, and worth 53% of its August self#
Michigan is 19th with 382 poll points. In the preseason ballot it was 16th with 718.
Two games, two wins, one of them over a team ranked 11th at kickoff, and Michigan comes out of it three places lower than it started and holding 336 fewer points. 382 against 718 is 53%. Same voters, same team, two victories later, a little more than half the support.
A preseason number is an estimate, and the season has started producing evidence against this one. Michigan has scored 30 points in two games, 13 against Western Michigan and 17 against Oklahoma. The voters who had Michigan 16th in August on the strength of its roster have watched that and moved.
Western Michigan, for its part, received 35 votes in the same poll.
Sixteen undefeated teams are ranked below a team that lost#
Ohio State went to Texas as the No. 1 team in the country and lost 24-23. It is 6th now. Oregon lost 39-31 at Oklahoma State, which had lost its own opener, and is 21st. Both teams are 1-1. The poll has them 15 places apart.
And Ohio State at 6th sits above almost everyone who has not lost at all: of the 19 teams ranked below it, 16 are undefeated. Michigan is one of the 16.
That is what a poll three ballots into a season is. It is still mostly August, sorted by who lost and to whom, and one Saturday is not enough to talk a voter out of a summer opinion.
The schedule ahead lost 1,244 poll points, and Michigan played none of it#
Michigan has 10 games left. Five are against teams in the current AP poll.
| Opponent | Date | Record | AP now | AP last week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UTEP | Sep 19 | 1-1 | NR | NR |
| Iowa | Sep 26 | 2-0 | 18 | 21 |
| Minnesota | Oct 3 | 1-1 | NR | NR |
| Penn State | Oct 17 | 2-0 | 14 | 16 |
| Indiana | Oct 24 | 2-0 | 4 | 5 |
| Rutgers | Oct 31 | 0-2 | NR | NR |
| Michigan State | Nov 7 | 2-0 | NR | NR |
| Oregon | Nov 14 | 1-1 | 21 | 6 |
| UCLA | Nov 21 | 2-0 | NR | NR |
| Ohio State | Nov 28 | 1-1 | 6 | 1 |
Add up what those five ranked teams were worth to AP voters last week and it comes to 5,524 points. Add up what they are worth now and it comes to 4,280. Michigan's remaining schedule shed 1,244 poll points, 22.5% of what it held, in a week when Michigan played nobody on it.
The results underneath that are worth more than the ranks. Ohio State lost by a point in Austin. Oregon lost by eight at a team that started 0-1. Minnesota, which Michigan visits on October 3, lost 38-13 at home to Mississippi State. Rutgers is 0-2, beaten 37-21 at home by Massachusetts and 28-21 at Boston College.
The three that held their ground did it against opposition that proves little: Indiana beat Howard 55-0, Penn State won 27-9 at Temple, and Iowa beat Iowa State 16-13, the only one of the three decided by fewer than 18 points.
UCLA, which Michigan hosts on November 21, is 2-0 and took nine votes in Sunday's poll without being ranked.
Seven Big Ten teams are in the AP Top 25. Michigan is one of them and plays five of the other six. The exception is Southern Cal, which Michigan does not play.
The playoff math has not started yet#
There is no College Football Playoff ranking. The selection committee does not publish until November, and any number attached to Michigan before then belongs to the person who made it up. The field is 12 teams under straight seeding, announced Sunday, December 6. The Big Ten championship game is December 5 in Indianapolis, and Michigan's road to it runs through nine conference games, the last of them at noon Eastern in Columbus on November 28.
What exists today is arithmetic rather than a projection. Michigan owns one win over a ranked team, and that team is now ranked 24th and may not be ranked at all in December, because the value of a win is not fixed on the day it happens. It floats with the team you beat, all autumn, and the committee grades the version of Oklahoma that exists in November.
Michigan has five more chances to put a better win at the top of that résumé than the one it has.
Link should be back, Babalola will not be#
Kyle Whittingham said at his Monday press conference that Evan Link, who started the opener at left guard and missed the Oklahoma game, should be back. "In fact, we should have him back this week, barring anything unforeseen." Nathan Efobi, who started in his place, may rotate there with him.
Andrew Babalola, who missed all of 2025 with a torn ACL and has missed both games this season, is going the other way. "Yeah, setback," Whittingham said. "So we're going to have to work through some things, and he will not be available in the near future, unfortunately."
The name that is new is Carter Meadows, the freshman defensive end who has not played a snap this season. "Carter should be good to go this week," Whittingham said.
Michigan hosts UTEP at Michigan Stadium on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Big Ten Network. UTEP is 1-1 and it is a common opponent: Oklahoma beat it 51-0 in the first week of the season, which says something about Oklahoma in week one and nothing reliable about the gap between Michigan and anybody.
What moved Michigan this week was one afternoon of its own and four that belonged to other people. Ohio State, Oregon and Minnesota all lost on Saturday, Rutgers lost at Boston College on the Friday before them, and all four are still on the schedule. Michigan's own contribution to its standing is two wins, 30 points and a victory over a team the voters now rank 24th.
Sources: AP Top 25 polls of 2026-08-17, 2026-09-06 and 2026-09-13, the week 3 table with points and previous rankings as published by NCAA.com on 2026-09-13, cross-read against the CollegeFootballData rankings feed. Scores, records and schedule from the CollegeFootballData games feed, read 2026-09-16. Kickoff times, networks and the December 5 Big Ten championship date from Michigan Athletics' 2026 football schedule page, opened 2026-09-16. Whittingham quotations from his September 14 press conference, reported by Clayton Sayfie of On3. Playoff field size, straight seeding and the December 6 selection date per the College Football Playoff release of 2026-01-23.
