Whether you like hearing this or not, here's where we stand when it comes to the 138 teams that play in the so-called Football Subdivision: There are only four teams that appear to be without flaws. That is to say, among the teams still undefeated — Tulsa! — only a handful have beaten their early season opponents with such ferocity and blatant disregard that we must award them style points. Damn, Arkansas.
Remember, my fellow sickos and curious casuals, that our sport is the only one in the world where we actually have serious debates about which team has the best loss and which team has the best win. We really are the tools of our own demise. In a sport where winning every game you play is only as good as the competition an athletic director and the conference home office will allow, scheduling is a bit like a 12-sided die roll.
The cupcake on your schedule three years ago could turn out to be juggernaut Indiana by the time you actually play them. So we're left to sort through the 400-plus games played so far and identify the early frontrunners to win the national title, based on our preconceived notions about how good a team — and a conference — should be at the start of Week 1 and how well those teams have met our expectations heading into Week 4. Yes, the previous sentence was a run-on.
But I needed you to hold your breath reading it, underwater, to feel how hard this exercise is. And while I have come to the conclusions below, make no mistake: This list will change, and the debate will rage on for another 10 weeks. Here's a look at my 2026 Ain’t Played Nobody rankings!
Indiana, king in this here barren and cheaply held land of Ain’t Played Nobody, with such nauseating wins as North Texas, Howard and Western Kentucky. These are hardly the kind of teams the Hoosiers would have to play to defend their national title. However, Indiana didn’t play anybody in non-conference play in 2025, and that worked out just fine for the Hoosiers.
Just ask Alabama. Add to that the fact that the Hoosiers have been devastating defensively over the last two games, pitching back-to-back shutouts, and suddenly there’s a little more substance behind the early-season résumé. On Friday, Indiana finally gets to play not just a Big Ten team, but an undefeated one in Northwestern.
Perhaps the Wildcats can probe and identify a flaw in Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers — one that might be readily apparent by the end of the game, even if Northwestern loses. The Hurricanes feel a lot like the Hoosiers: thin on teams to test them, thick on just how good they still might be. They haven’t kept the score close against any of their 2026 opponents, beating everybody by double digits.
But those opponents have been about as much of a challenge for Mario Cristobal’s Canes as white Kleenex is to punch through with a flamethrower. Admittedly, it doesn’t get tougher for the Canes, who play Central Michigan on Saturday. But they’ll do it with not one, but two Heisman candidates on offense in quarterback Darian Mensah and wide receiver Malachi Toney.
Mensah has been so accurate and so unbothered in the pocket that he’s thrown fewer incompletions (eight) — 71 of 79 passing this season — than touchdowns (11). Toney has amassed 444 receiving yards in just three games, and the defense hasn’t given up more than 20 points in a game this year. Their game against Notre Dame can’t come fast enough.
The Fighting Irish look like one of the most balanced teams in the sport, with an offense that has rounded into one that can depend on its quarterback play to win games and a rushing attack that looks like it has recovered nicely from losing two first-round NFL Draft picks last season. Nothing about quarterback CJ Carr has led me to believe he can’t be as good this season as former Notre Dame star Riley Leonard was in 2024, when the Fighting Irish made their run to the national championship game. Defensive coordinator Chris Ash has put together a defense that has held Wisconsin, Rice and Michigan State to 13 points or fewer, but my eyes — like yours — are on their Nov.
7 date with Miami. The only team that looks like it could give Notre Dame trouble between now and then is BYU on Oct. 17.
Still, it’s Notre Dame. And because it’s Notre Dame, we must remain vigilant: You never know when Northern Illinois is going to beat them — at home. Kirby Smart’s Dawgs are boring and devastating.
Their scoring differential through three games is 178-40. They possess the SEC’s best scoring defense, they don’t bother to throw the ball unless they have to — and they’ve rarely had to — and, quiet as it’s kept, have won the last two SEC Championships. At this point in the season, they’ve not shown a weakness any team can readily exploit.
Oklahoma no longer looks anything like a team capable of troubling the Dawgs, with a quarterback in John Mateer who is still too erratic in his play, an offensive line that can’t protect him and expectations that are out of reach for a program that hasn’t played for a national championship in nearly 20 years. Just Missed: Texas: The No. 1-ranked team in the AP Top 25 Poll is undefeated and has the best win in the sport — at home against previous AP No.
1-ranked Ohio State. However, the Longhorns needed to fight back from a 23-3 deficit to win that game by a single point and one egregious clock management class by OSU coach Ryan Day. Ohio State: The loss to Texas showed the biggest flaw the Buckeyes must address — not getting superstar Jeremiah Smith a single touch in the final 23 minutes of the game.
What good is having John Stewart wielding the power of the Green Lantern on the perimeter if you don’t get him the ball in Winning Time? Ole Miss: Ole Miss is undefeated but also needed late — and quite amazing — play from Heisman frontrunner and quarterback Trinidad Chambliss to defeat not just a top-10 LSU team, but a top-25 Louisville team, too. The Rebels led LSU by 17 before giving up that lead and led the Cardinals by 14 before blowing that lead.
It’s a team that can’t finish — yet. There’s football left to play. There are upsets coming, especially with six ranked matchups on the TV guide this Saturday.
The "Ain’t Played Nobody" rankings aren’t likely to change this week, but their time is coming. For now, it’s tree-shaking time for the rest of the top 25. Let’s see who else falls out.
Let’s see who else proves they can hang. Sooner or later, everybody gotta play somebody.
