With four weeks of the regular season college football schedule completed, our voters in the CBS Sports 136 have turned a corner when it comes to letting go of preseason expectations and allowing the results on the field speak for a team’s standing.
After all, when we are ranking all 136 teams in the FBS, it’s important to not just consider an “in group” and an “out group” like a top 25 ballot. It’s clear that teams like Clemson, which started the year at No. 4 in our rankings, is not going to be anything close to what we expected. But how bad have things gotten, and where is the appropriate place to rank a team that stood within one score of top-five LSU yet just lost at home as a three-score favorite to Syracuse?
There’s also an important update for how we view teams that might have gone through the early part of the season facing lesser competition once they face quality opponents. That’s where Indiana, which spent the early weeks of 2025 ranked outside the top 15, is one of the biggest movers within in the top 30 this week after absolutely thumping Illinois on Saturday night. The Hoosiers treated Illinois, a team we had in the top 10, just like they did the Group of Six and FCS opponents from early in the season. The margin was large and backups finished the game on the field. Indiana’s machine-like excellence deserves notice, and that’s exactly what our voters did as we prepare for Week 5.
With many top teams off in Week 4, you are not going to find a ton of movement at the very top of the CBS Sports 136. Indiana’s win against Illinois and Oklahoma’s win against Auburn provided some two-way action with winners moving up and losers moving down, but the most drastic action happened outside of the top 25. We have identified some of the most notable adjustments in the Mover’s Report, which you can find below the top 25 table.
College football experts from CBS Sports and 247Sports contribute ballots each week, which are averaged together for our rankings. You can see the top 25 below and 26-136 on our rankings page.
Biggest movers
- No. 30 Memphis (+27): There were calls for justice coming from inside the house — the house being CBS Sports as Gary Parrish broke out of his college basketball shell to demand that unbeaten Memphis be treated with more respect in the CBS Sports 136. Our voters are not going to be intimidated, but they will react aggressively to results that can affirm a team’s strength. The Tigers early season schedule did not provide a ton of tests, but after Ryan Silverfield’s squad took down Arkansas over the weekend, they are up into the top 30 of our rankings.
- No. 50 North Texas (+13): The Mean Green are 4-0, beating teams by an average of 27.5 points per game, and over the weekend outlasted Army in an overtime thriller that certainly got the attention of our voters. Freshman quarterback Drew Mestemaker has one of the best touchdowns-interception ratios in the country with 10 touchdown tosses and no interceptions so far in 2025, and this team is firmly in the mix among top tier squads in an increasingly competitive American title race.
- No. 40 Syracuse (+12): Fran Brown took his team down into Death Valley and thumped Clemson from the start, jumping out to an early lead and defending it all the way to a double-digit win as a three-score underdog. A loss to Tennessee in the season opener is the only blemish on this profile so far, and if the Orange can sustain the loss of starting quarterback Steve Angeli to injury and continue to stack wins, it can be knocking on the door of the top 25 for the second straight season.
- No. 24 Utah (-12): Two things have happened when it comes to Utah’s ranking. First, and most significant, is how the Utes fell way short of expectations against Texas Tech at home on Saturday. What was assumed to be a meeting of the two top teams in the Big 12 revealed a gap between Utah and the top of the league, which is due for some adjustment on how they stack up against the rest of the country as well. But there’s also a recalibration from the boost that Utah got from blasting UCLA in the season opener, which maybe carries less weight given the way the Bruins have performed in the following weeks. This is still a very good team, just not one our voters can confidently put in the top 15.
- No. 23 Illinois (-15): Illinois didn’t just beat at Indiana on Saturday night, the Hoosiers smoked the Illini. The final margin was especially damaging for perception, and when it comes to ranking one-loss teams against each other, perception is going play a huge role early in the season. The fact that Illinois is still in the top 25 speaks to how our voters might be applying context like the team’s injury issues on defense or adding more respect to Indiana’s strength, but it was not a surprise to see a strong adjustment on a team that was previously inside the top 10.
- No. 49 Clemson (-16): Tigers have dropped 36 spots in the last two weeks and 45 spots since the preseason rankings, and yet that probably isn’t even as close to how the fall from grace feels when it comes Clemson’s standing in the national landscape. Even when the bottom was falling out in 2023 (a season that still finished with a 9-4 record), there was not this much alarm in terms of how a team that appeared to be so much better on paper than they are in performance. The Tigers have a week off to reset before continuing their ACC schedule, but the path to a conference title and CFP contention is much less likely with an 0-2 start in conference play.
Check out the rest of the CBS Sports 136: Teams ranked 26-136
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