The poll that landed Sunday looked like a map redrawn after an earthquake. Five of the top seven teams in the AP Top 25lost on Saturday, something that had never happened since the poll began in 1936. Notre Dame fell. Indiana fell. Alabama fell.Texas fell. And the No. 1 team in the country, the one with the most polished résumé in college football, went down in its own house.
And right there in the middle of the wreckage, standing exactly where it stood a week ago, was Kentucky football. Unbothered. Unbeaten on the road when it mattered. And three spots higher.
The Wildcats are 6-1 and ranked No. 12 in the latest AP poll, up from No. 15, after going to Norman and hunting down Oklahoma 21-13. Nobody had to hand them anything. KentuckyleftOklahomawith
a road win, an eight-point margin and a spot in the new pecking order, a spot it earned the hard way while the rest of the sport was busy self-destructing.
The new No. 1 in town
Miami is your new No. 1, a perch the Hurricanes haven't occupied in the AP poll since 2002. They needed two extra periods to get past a Florida State team that had no intention of playing along. It was not pretty. It did not have to be. Chaos is a heck of a recruiter, and this week it signed Miami to the throne.
BYU climbs to No. 2 after beating Notre Dame 28-24, a spot the Cougars haven't held since 1984. Ohio State is third. Notre Dame, once No. 2, is fourth.
Georgia falls, but still stands tallest in the SEC
Then there is Georgia, and the sentence nobody in Athens wanted to read. Kirby Smart's Bulldogs entered Saturday at No. 1 and left it with a 27-24 loss at home to Auburn. Gunner Stockton's late fumble helped put Auburn in range, and Alex McPherson's kick as the clock expired finished the job. First-year Auburn coach Alex Golesh landed the signature win of his tenure. Georgia landed a lesson. Not since 1942 had the Bulldogs lost in the regular season as the AP's top-ranked team.
The Bulldogs drop four spots to No. 5. That is a long fall for a program built to hold the high ground. But here is the thing about the SEC's pecking order: at 6-1, Georgia is still the highest-ranked team in the league in the new poll. The kingdom shook. The king kept the crown, narrowly, and now has to defend it with a week of film and a very uncomfortable team meeting.
Where everybody else landed
The SEC is stacked in the poll, with nine teams ranked, and the order tells the story of a conference that beat itself up on Saturday:
- No. 5 Georgia: still the league's top-ranked team despite the loss to Auburn.
- No. 7 Ole Miss: the highest SEC team below Georgia, sitting right behind Indiana.
- No. 11 Tennessee: knocking on the door of the top 10.
- No. 12 Kentucky: fourth among SEC teams, and the only one in this group that did its work on the road.
- No. 13 Alabama: the Crimson Tide, ranked No. 6 a week ago, were one of the day's casualties.
- No. 18 LSU: the team Kentucky beat in overtime at Kroger Field last Saturday.
- No. 19 Texas: the Longhorns, No. 7 a week ago, took one of the five losses in the top seven.
- No. 20 Florida
- No. 22 Missouri
Pause on that list. Kentucky sits ahead of Alabama, ahead of LSU, ahead of Texas. The same Wildcats who spent weeks being slept on are now the fourth-highest-ranked team in the Southeastern Conference. The "respect" argument is officially over. The "prove it again" argument has simply moved to a new address.
Back home, and nowhere to hide
That new address is Kroger Field, where Kentucky returns to host Vanderbilt. And here is where a ranking becomes a burden.
A No. 12 next to your name changes how everybody plays you. It means Vanderbilt gets to circle the date. It means every team that makes it to Lexington gets to treat the visit as its own personal bowl game. This is the exact point of the season where good teams find out whether they are actually good teams, or simply teams that had a nice month.
The Wildcats have already shown they can survive the hard version of this sport. They won a 35-34 overtime game against LSU at Kroger Field. They went to Norman and took care of the Sooners on the road. What they have not yet done is play the game where everyone expects them to win. That is a different kind of difficult.
But Kentucky doesn't need a new identity for Vanderbilt. It needs the old one: win the line of scrimmage, protect the football, make the other team run out of options before the Wildcats run out of lives. It has worked for six wins. It worked in Norman.
Saturday's lesson, for anyone who needs one: the SEC will lie to you in October. Georgia learned it at home. Alabama and Texas learned it from the wrong end of a scoreboard. Kentucky learned it a while ago, which is why it is still standing.
So go ahead, Big Blue Nation. Enjoy the view from No. 12. Just don't get comfortable, because the next team coming through the door at Kroger Field would like very much to take the seat.
This article originally appeared on UK Wildcats Wire: Kentucky hunts down Sooners, climbs to No. 12 in AP Top 25
