THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG
From Nowhere to the Top 10: Final Poll Crashers Since 1989
101 times since 1990, a team finished in the final AP Top 10 after missing the previous season's final Top 25 completely. Three went all the way to No. 1. Every crasher, by season.
The method is simple, and the data is the 37 final AP Top 25 polls from 1989 through 2025, the same set our Poll Position game is built on. A "crasher" is a team that finished in the final Top 10 in one season after appearing nowhere in the previous season's final Top 25. Not unranked in the preseason poll. Not unranked in October. Invisible in the sport's final accounting one year, top 10 the next.
It has happened 101 times across the 36 seasons from 1990 to 2025, by 52 different schools. Only two seasons in the whole run, 1992 and 2009, produced none at all. The final poll's top 10 looks like a closed club from a distance. Up close, it leaks almost three new members a year.
The three that went all the way
Three crashers did not stop at the top 10. They finished No. 1.
Oklahoma, 2000. The Sooners' previous final-poll appearance was No. 17 in 1993. They missed six straight final polls, then won the whole thing. Seven years between ranked finishes, and the return trip ended at the very top.
Ohio State, 2002. The Buckeyes finished No. 2 in 1998, then vanished from the final poll for three straight seasons before the 2002 team ran the table and finished No. 1. A short drought by Oklahoma's standard, but a strange one for Ohio State.
Auburn, 2010. Auburn's last final-poll appearance before 2010 was No. 15 in 2007. Two lost seasons followed, then the 2010 team finished No. 1. It will not surprise you that Auburn appears in this data a lot.
The No. 2 club
Seven more crashers stopped one spot short: Georgia Tech in 1990, LSU in 2003, Auburn in 2004, Utah in 2008, Auburn again in 2013, Georgia in 2017, and TCU in 2022. The double is the story. Auburn's 2013 team finished No. 2 three seasons after the school's 2010 team finished No. 1, with unranked finishes in both years in between. No other school owns two of the top crasher finishes ever. Georgia Tech's 1990 entry is the purest on the board: the Yellow Jackets do not appear in the 1989 final poll, the first in our set, and finished the next season at No. 2.
Repeat offenders
Crashing the top 10 is supposed to be a once-in-a-generation event. Penn State has done it five times: 1993, 2005, 2008, 2016, and 2022. Alabama, Auburn, and TCU have each done it four times. The pattern is not really about down programs catching lightning. It is about rich programs having a lost season, disappearing from the final accounting entirely, and then snapping back. The final poll forgives quickly if you win enough.
The drought-breakers tell the other version of the story. When Washington State finished No. 10 in 2018, it was the school's first final-poll appearance since 2003. Iowa State's No. 9 finish in 2020 was its first since 2000. Tulane's No. 9 in 2022 was its first since 1998, a 24-year gap between ranked finishes, the longest in this dataset. Texas Tech's No. 7 in 2025 ended a drought going back to 2009.
Every crasher, by season
Final rank in parentheses.
1990: Georgia Tech (2). 1991: Alabama (5), California (8), East Carolina (9). 1992: none. 1993: Auburn (4), Wisconsin (6), West Virginia (7), Penn State (8), Arizona (10). 1994: Utah (10). 1995: Northwestern (8), Kansas (9), Virginia Tech (10). 1996: Arizona State (4), BYU (5), North Carolina (10). 1997: UCLA (5), Washington State (9), Georgia (10). 1998: Arizona (4), Wisconsin (6), Tulane (7). 1999: Michigan State (7), Alabama (8), Marshall (10).
2000: Oklahoma (1), Washington (3), Oregon State (4). 2001: Tennessee (4), Colorado (9), Washington State (10). 2002: Ohio State (1), USC (4), Kansas State (7), Iowa (8). 2003: LSU (2), Miami (OH) (10). 2004: Auburn (2), Louisville (6), California (9), Virginia Tech (10). 2005: Penn State (3), West Virginia (5), Alabama (8), Notre Dame (9). 2006: Boise State (5), Michigan (8). 2007: Missouri (4), Kansas (7). 2008: Utah (2), Alabama (6), TCU (7), Penn State (8). 2009: none.
2010: Auburn (1), Stanford (4), Oklahoma (6). 2011: USC (6). 2012: Ohio State (3), Notre Dame (4), Texas A&M (6), Florida (9). 2013: Auburn (2), Michigan State (3), Missouri (5), UCF (10). 2014: TCU (3), Georgia Tech (8), Georgia (9). 2015: Stanford (3), Oklahoma (5), Houston (8), Iowa (9). 2016: USC (3), Washington (4), Penn State (7). 2017: Georgia (2), UCF (6), TCU (9). 2018: Florida (8), Texas (9), Washington State (10). 2019: Oregon (5), Minnesota (10).
2020: Texas A&M (4), Iowa State (9), Northwestern (10). 2021: Michigan (3), Baylor (5), Michigan State (9). 2022: TCU (2), Tennessee (6), Penn State (7), Washington (8), Tulane (9). 2023: Missouri (8), Mississippi (9). 2024: Arizona State (7), Boise State (8), Indiana (10). 2025: Texas Tech (7), Texas A&M (8).
Try it from memory
Poll Position deals you one of these final polls and asks you to rebuild all 25 spots. The crasher seasons are the cruel ones, because the top 10 contains a team your brain insists was not there. It was. The receipts are above, and the strangest games behind some of these seasons are in our craziest box scores collection.