College footballStill Standing Weekly · Through Week 8 · Oct 26, 2026
79 entries to zero: the college survivor pool that ran out of survivors
Three Saturdays. That's how long it took a college survivor pool we hosted to go from 79 entries to none.
The pool
It started mid-season, in Week 6: 79 entries, four picks every Saturday, one miss and you're out. Five of the AP's top seven lost in Week 7, and five entries were left going into this weekend. All five went down in Week 8, and the title was decided on the tiebreaker.
Four picks a week means an entry has to go 4-for-4 every Saturday. In a normal year, the favorites carry a pool like that into November. This year they didn't.
Week 8, by the numbers
- No. 2 BYU, a week after beating Notre Dame, lost 39-31 in double overtime at unranked UCF.
- No. 7 Ole Miss lost 34-27 to Texas.
- No. 8 Texas Tech lost 37-24 to unranked Cincinnati.
- No. 11 Tennessee lost 27-24 to unranked South Carolina as time expired.
- No. 15 Iowa lost 13-10 to Minnesota on a field goal and fell out of the poll.
Three of the AP's top 10 lost. BYU dropped from No. 2 to No. 8, and Texas jumped from No. 19 to No. 11.
Three weeks of chaos
- Week 6: No. 1 Texas lost on the final play.
- Week 7: five of the AP's top seven lost on the same day, a first since the poll began in 1936.
- Week 8: No. 2 BYU lost to unranked UCF. Per Fox Sports, it's the first time since 2007 that a top-two team has lost to an unranked opponent three weeks running.
Only three unbeaten teams are left in the AP poll: Miami, Utah and UCLA. Fox Sports says that few unbeatens this late in October hasn't happened since 1977.
If you're out
Our pool lasted three Saturdays, and plenty of yours probably didn't last much longer. The College Football Playoff field is set on Selection Sunday, December 6, and a playoff survivor pool starts everybody over.
Pool figures are our own data. Everything else is from the sources below.
Knocked out? Start a playoff pool.
Still Standing runs private survivor pools for the playoffs. You set the rules and send one link. We handle the picks, live scores and reminders, and draft a recap of your pool after every round.
Something unclear, or a rule you’d like us to add? Send us feedback.