Ranking college football's unbeaten teams after Week 7 - ESPN

A week ago, we found ourselves suddenly down to 12 unbeaten college football teams following a particularly madcap Week 6. The remaining members of the club regrouped, however. In Week 7, the only loss for an unbeaten (Ohio State) came at the hands of another (Oregon), and everyone else was either on bye or survived and advanced.

So here we are, midway through the regular season, down to 11 teams with perfect records. We're going to rank the remaining members of the club and talk about each team's biggest remaining question. But first, we must talk about two teams in particular.

Last week, Army and Navy each reached 5-0 in the same season for the first time since 1945. On Sunday they both landed spots in the AP Top 25 for the first time since October 1960. Both will play Notre Dame in the coming weeks, and Navy hosts Tulane in a huge Week 12 matchup as well. If Navy wins that one, it goes from conceivable to likely that we could get an Army-Navy American Athletic championship game in Week 15 (possibly with the winner qualifying for the College Football Playoff), followed by the normal Army-Navy game in Landover, Maryland, the next Saturday.

It's almost impossible to describe how much of a delightful surprise this is.

Jump to a section:
How Army and Navy are still here
Ranking the unbeatens

In 2023, their records disguised the mediocrity. Army went 6-6, but two wins came against FCS schools, and while Jeff Monken's Black Knights did beat two SP+ top-50 teams (UTSA and Air Force) they lost to two others by a combined 81-0 and lost to two of the 10 worst teams in FBS (Louisiana Monroe and UMass) as well. The offense turned the ball over far too much, and the only thing it accomplished was moving slowly enough that a