In the past 10 years, 21 college football teams have entered the season ranked in the AP preseason top 10 only to finish the season unranked.
Last season, Texas A&M was sixth in the preseason AP poll, then crashed and burned during a 5-7 campaign.
Oklahoma and Baylor joined the Aggies on their journey from the top of the polls to losing seasons.
Those three top-10 programs all lost seven games in 2022, falling far short of their projected season win totals.
Only Baylor salvaged a winning record against the spread (7-6), while Texas A&M (4-8) and Oklahoma (5-8) consistently burned bettors at the window all season long.
Dysfunctional coaching, poor injury luck and questionable officiating can lead to upsets, but history tells us we can expect bad fortune to befall at least one, if not two, top-10 teams this season.
So which top-10 teams are most likely to flame out this fall?
I’ll start with No. 10 Washington.
The Huskies, fresh off of an 11-win campaign, are one of the most experienced teams in the nation — according to the Action Network’s Net TARP rating, which measures returning production and transfer-portal activity.
If I had to nitpick a bit, Washington feasted on lowly opponents, last season beating six teams outside of the top 68 in the Sagarin Ratings.
They also struggled a bit on the road, losing to UCLA and Arizona State, while only beating a 4-8 Cal team by seven in Berkeley.
The Huskies’ schedule this season is far more rugged.
They will open with one of the best Group of Five teams in Boise State, then travel to Michigan State in Week 3. In Pac-12 play, they will draw four ranked opponents (Oregon, at Oregon State, at USC, Utah) and will need to navigate a tricky road trip to Arizona.
The Wildcats’ offense took a major step forward last season, finishing ninth nationally in offensive plays of 20-plus yards.
That appears to be the Huskies’ kryptonite. Washington allowed 55 plays of 20-plus yards last season (64th).
Even with a Heisman-caliber quarterback, Michael Penix Jr., a rising star at head coach, Kalen DeBoer, and a potentially salty defense, this schedule has the ability to trip up just about any team.
Given their preseason hype, a win total of 9.5 shows value on the under, according to my power ratings.
LSU will enter the season with legitimate national title aspirations and palpable hype.
After all, the Tigers knocked off Alabama last season, won the SEC West and pulverized Purdue in the Citrus Bowl, 63-7.
But their schedule could prove to be thorny. They will kick things off in Orlando, Fla., with a top-10 tussle against Florida State.
They also will travel to Ole Miss and Alabama.
The latter is a revenge game against Nick Saban.
Since his arrival in Tuscaloosa, Saban is 15-1 straight up and 11-5 against the spread in revenge games.
And despite LSU’s breakthrough season in 2022, the Tigers were still walloped by Tennessee at home (40-13) and dismantled as 10-point favorites at Texas A&M late in the season.
Toss in narrow escapes against Auburn (21-17) and Arkansas (13-10), and you can see why LSU is a “fall from grace” candidate.
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There’s also the potential for a quarterback controversy to develop between Jayden Daniels and Garrett Nussmeier.
Daniels is a dynamic playmaker and master of the read option, but Nussmeier has the arm talent to unlock LSU’s downfield passing game in a way Daniels simply cannot.
When you add it all up, the warning signs are there for the Tigers to fall short of their 9.5-win total.
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