Texas takes AP No. 1. Notre Dame still leads Saturday Index.

Texas erased a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit, beat Ohio State 24–23 and took the top spot in the AP poll. The Longhorns earned the weekend's biggest result. Notre Dame still leads the Saturday Index power rankings.

Notre Dame remains No. 1 in SI's update entering Week 3, followed by Ohio State and Georgia. Texas moves from ninth to eighth. That split is the central question after a Saturday that also saw Oregon lose at Oklahoma State and Oklahoma fall at Michigan.

The comparison uses the AP poll released Sunday, September 13, after Week 2. SI and the voters share 21 of their Top 25 teams, but several disagreements extend well beyond the order at the top.

Why Texas can win and Ohio State can stay second

A power ranking estimates team strength; voters can also reward the result in front of them. Texas has a compelling argument after winning the weekend's marquee game, even if the narrow margin did little to separate two strong teams.

SI's rating adjustment uses a frozen pregame margin baseline, separate from the Premium score forecast. It measures how far the final margin departed from that baseline while retaining much of the previous assessment.

That leaves Texas and Ohio State with almost unchanged strength ratings. Texas gains a place because the order around it changes. The dramatic finish reshapes the season's story far more than it changes the model's view of the teams.

Notre Dame adds 0.76 rating points after beating Rice 52–0 and remains first at 34.65. Ohio State follows at 29.46. Most of that gap was already there before the weekend; the Rice result extends it.

Oregon and Oklahoma are the harder calls

Oregon drops from sixth to ninth in SI after losing 39–31 at Oklahoma State. The Ducks lose 3.00 rating points, yet remain in the model's top ten.

Oklahoma loses 1.22 points after its 17–10 defeat at Michigan and still ranks tenth. Michigan moves from 22nd to 21st. Those positions leave SI considerably more confident in the two losing teams than the AP voters are.

Oregon and Oklahoma entered the weekend with enough of a cushion to absorb losses. Their next performances need to justify the confidence that remains. A consistent calculation alone cannot tell us whether the model is responding quickly enough.

Oklahoma State makes the concern especially clear. The Cowboys are SI's biggest mover by places, climbing 13 spots from 104th to 91st. Their low starting point still dominates their position even after a 3.00-point gain. That is a serious early-season question for the model. It does not prove the upset was a fluke.

Alabama climbs; Texas Tech's cushion shrinks

Alabama moves from seventh to fourth in SI after beating Kentucky 45–17. Its 1.68-point gain puts it just ahead of fifth-place Miami.

Texas Tech moves the other way despite winning 35–24 at Oregon State. The Red Raiders lose 1.44 rating points and fall from third to sixth because the margin was smaller than the rating baseline expected. They sit almost level with seventh-place Texas A&M.

A win does not guarantee a higher rating, and moving up the list does not always mean a team improved. Clemson slips 0.55 points but moves from 26th to 25th as other teams fall farther.

The largest gaps extend beyond the top ten

Penn State has the largest gap among AP-ranked teams: 17 places. Houston, Louisville, BYU and Indiana also sit substantially lower in SI. The full table below shows each comparison.

SI's four Top 25 teams outside the AP rankings are South Carolina at No. 12, Vanderbilt at No. 22, Florida at No. 24 and Clemson at No. 25. The AP-only group is Penn State, Houston, Louisville and Virginia.

There is a coverage limit behind Sunday's table. The update uses 49 of 86 completed Week 2 games. The other 37 had no frozen margin baseline and were excluded from the adjustment. In all, 98 of 138 teams receive rating changes; all 138 are sorted again.

Indiana, Houston and Louisville have no game-based adjustment in this edition. Their positions should not be read as fresh verdicts on every performance they have just delivered. Sunday's rankings update the previous ratings with comparable results; a full reassessment of every team's profile remains a different task.

Every AP-ranked team, alongside SI

The table compares the September 13 AP poll with SI's Sunday update entering Week 3. “Higher” means closer to No. 1 in SI. Unranked teams are not assigned an invented AP rank.

See all 138 Saturday Index power rankings

Revisit Oklahoma State's win over Oregon

Read the Texas–Ohio State comeback recap