Four overrated teams from college football's Week 8 AP Poll

Oklahoma Sooners vs Texas Longhorns | SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

We're officially stranded in the middle of the college football regular season, with chaos and coach firings everywhere while the College Football Playoff and national title pictures look as muddy as they ever have.

Now that we have a Week 8 poll from the Associated Press, let's look at four college football teams who the media is ranking much higher than they should be given the results we've seen to date. Of course, first, you can see the entire top-25 below, followed by our picks for most overrated:

Week 8 AP Poll:

1. Ohio State (50)
2. Miami (13)
3. Indiana (3)
4. Texas A&M
5. Ole Miss
6. Alabama
7. Texas Tech
8. Oregon
9. Georgia
10. LSU
11. Tennessee
12. Georgia Tech
13. Notre Dame
14. Oklahoma
15. BYU
16. Missouri
17. Vanderbilt
18. Virginia
19. South Florida
20. USC
21. Texas
22. Memphis
23. Utah
24. Cincinnati
25. Nebraska

And now, your four most overrated teams from the week's Top 25...

12. Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets | Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Credit Brent Key and the Yellow Jackets, who continue to clean up against a poor schedule. Georgia Tech is all the way up to a top-12 team with wins against this zaney and unserious cast of characters: Wake Forest, Temple, Clemson, Colorado, Virginia Tech and Gardner Webb.

Is tech a top-12 caliber team? In this day and age, who knows. If so, they've taken care of business where they should have, which separates them from most even when the wins haven't looked pristine. But the feeling from most other fanbases is likely that GT will flounder once facing superior, perhaps legitimate top-12 competition. At this point though, it seems likely they'll get a chance to prove their worth and potentially wind up in the ACC title game.

14. Oklahoma

Oklahoma Sooners quarterback John Mateer (10) mishandles the snap | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

The Sooners stormed out of the gates in 2025 beating Michigan and Auburn to earn early national acclaim with a couple of power conference victories. However, the Wolverines and Tigers have since faltered while OU's QB and Heisman Trophy favorite, John Mateer, suffered an injury and underwent surgery to the thumb of his throwing hand — very unideal!

Well, in a hurried return against Texas, Mateer was battered up and even bled from his repaired hand while Oklahoma failed to notch seven points on the scoreboard in an ugly 17-point loss that featured rival Texas ending with 23 unanswered points. Oklahoma looked far from the 14th-best team in the country on Saturday, and no obvious signs emerged signifying that Mateer will regain full strength to lead Oklahoma into an SEC slate that gets tougher, not easier, going forward.

18. Virginia

Louisville, Kentucky: Virginia Cavaliers quarterback Chandler Morris | Jamie Rhodes-Imagn Images

Picture is this way: If somebody told you before the season that the Virginia Cavaliers would be ranked in the top-20 of the Week 8 college football AP Poll with zero top-25 wins and one loss to a 4-3 NC State team — would that really make any sense? It doesn't, really.

In the way that a stock price doesn't always reflect a company's actual value, sometimes college football teams can stay the same, in terms of quality, while their AP Poll stock totally fluctuates. A few weeks back, the Cavaliers handed Florida State their first loss of the season, which seemed a tremendous feat given how strong the 'Noles plus Alabama, who they beat in Week 1, had looked. Two weeks later... and the 'Bama win looks like an aberration for FSU, who has dropped three straight games, which totally undercuts Virginia's crown jewel accomplishment of their 5-1 record.

What was top-25 stock two weeks ago now doesn't feel so steady for a Virginia team that may not be 18th-best in the nation yet still warrants respect in the ACC race, especially since that strange NC State contest actually did not count as a conference game.

24. Cincinnati

Cincinnati Bearcats players | Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Bearcats scored 35 more points than No. 25 Nebraska in this week's AP Poll... yet it was the Cornhuskers who outscored Cincinnati by three points, 20-17, in Arrowhead Stadium in the first game of the season back in August. For this reason alone, Cincy is at least *slightly* overrated.

Of course, the AP Poll isn't as cut-and-dried as swapping one team for another over a head-to-head result. The Poll surveys 100 or more people and features thousands of total votes before spitting out rankings, with voters likely placing Cincy and Nebraska all over the map. Still, more of them should have slotted the Huskers a shade higher than the Bearcats.