BYU Delivered a Win That Could Shake Up the College Football Playoff

For anyone else who feels like they are living in 1984, you are not alone.

The following has nothing to do with Flock cameras or newspeak or anything else that may have the late George Orwell turning in his grave — though, it should be noted, no one ever got this thoughts on a 24-team College Football Playoff.

For our purposes here, allusion to 1984 comes from eighth-ranked BYU’s 28-24 defeat of No. 2-ranked Notre Dame on Saturday. Their win over the Fighting Irish is the Cougars’ most significant in 42 years, when BYU claimed the most improbable national championship in modern college football.

The 1984 Cougars remain the sport’s ultimate outliers as the last team from an outsider conference to win the national title. Labels were less official in this era, predating the Playoff, Bowl Championship Series or Bowl Alliance.

Nevertheless, it was implicitly understood the Western Athletic Conference was not meant to contend for the same crown as what we know today as power conferences. Just ask the 1975 Arizona State Sun Devils.

However, a gutty, 20-14 win over third-ranked Pitt to open the season sent BYU on course down a path lit by the right stars all aligning. As the Cougars racked up win after win each week, with quarterback Robbie Bosco putting up the nation’s most impressive passing statistics, other teams that were supposed to compete for championships kept losing.

By the time BYU completed a perfect season with its defeat of Michigan in the Holiday Bowl, only Washington was left with fewer than two blemishes on the docket.

BYU’s win over Notre Dame in the stadium named for the coach who led that Cougars team to the title, LaVell Edwards, is the program’s most significant win since that comeback at Pitt in 1984.

The ending was not without controversy: BYU cornerback Evan Johnson and Notre Dame receiver Jaden Greathouse were hand-fighting on CJ Carr’s final pass attempt. The physicality should have the Irish faithful grousing about pass interference for as long as Notre Dame remains in the Playoff picture.

Nevertheless, that final defensive stand to preserve the BYU victory putting a fitting cap on a Saturday that packed that delivered as much chaos in roughly 12 hours as the entirety of the 1984 campaign.

Oct. 17, 2026 should go down as one of the wildest days in recent college football history. It began with one undefeated bunch from the state of Indiana losing on a final pass attempt, and effectively ended the same way.

Reigning national champion and fifth-ranked Indiana’s 19-14 loss at home to Ohio State snapped the Hoosiers’ winning streak of 22 games. The margin could not have been much more narrow, as Josh Hoover’s fourth-down toss to a streaking Nick Marsh would have scored a go-ahead touchdown — if not for the throw going ever-so-wide and leading Marsh out-of-bounds.

The FOX production crew deserves a helmet sticker for capturing the stunned stare on Marsh’s face after his nullified grab. The Hoosiers receiver’s expression perfectly encapsulated the shock that reverberated throughout college football all day.

Indiana was 1-of-5 top 10-ranked teams to lose on Saturday. And while both the Hoosiers and their in-state counterpart Fighting Irish lost to opponents also ranked in the top 10, No. 1 Georgia and No. 7 Texas fell to unranked Auburn and Florida, each by a field goal.

Sixth-ranked Alabama was dominated in its 26-10 loss at No. 14 Tennessee. And, while No. 3 Miami is likely to receive the news it’s the top-ranked team in college football for the first time Dec. 2002, the Hurricanes hardly looked the part in an overtime win over Florida State.

Miami is now one of a fast-shrinking club of teams still undefeated in this turbulent season. It’s a club that also includes unlikely Big Ten contender UCLA after its 17-7 win over Wisconsin; James Madison, the program current UCLA coach Bob Chesney previously headed up; and teams from the Big 12 Conference.

The Big 12 of 2026 is not the WAC of 1984. Still, there’s a similar, implicit understanding that the Big 12 isn’t meant to compete for national championships in the same way the Big Ten or SEC should.

That much is evident two years into the 12-team Playoff, with only the league’s automatic bid advancing to the tournament.

Behind BYU’s signature win, and with the anarchy unfolding elsewhere in the sport, the entire Big 12 stands to benefit from the Cougars.