Week 4 boasts most ranked games since 2023 -- will the results match? - ESPN

If you think there are more ranked college football matchups than usual Saturday, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Week 4 will have the most packed slate of games featuring two teams ranked in the AP poll in years.

This weekend, just under half of the teams ranked in the AP's Top 25 will face off on the gridiron — 12 teams across six games. But while six ranked games in one week is rare, it's not unprecedented. According to ESPN Research, the last time it happened was less than three years ago, during the conference championship week of the 2023-24 season.

To say that week — which featured one ranked game Friday and five more Saturday — lived up to the hype would be an understatement. Two of the six games were decided by just three points. Two teams projected to be in that season's College Football Playoff, the final edition of the four-team playoff system, would find themselves out of the picture the next day. A legendary coach won his final game and a 29-game winning streak came to a close.

Will this week match the drama of the last time we had six ranked games? Well, probably not, given this weekend's games won't decide conference titles or playoff spots (at least not directly). But with the parallels in ranked game quantity, it's still worth revisiting one of the most consequential slates in recent college football history.

A memorable weekend got off to a hot start early — the fireworks started Friday, not Saturday, as Washington and Oregon went down to the wire in Las Vegas. In what was the final Pac-12 championship game (at least as the conference was then constituted), the two Pacific Northwest rivals delivered a top-five clash worthy of deciding a Sunday playoff spot.

The Huskies raced out to an early 20-3 lead,