Goodbye, James Madison. You aren't the first to lose your way in Statesboro. We hardly knew ye, Coastal Carolina. (Actually, we know you pretty well by now, don't we?) Thought you had it, Oklahoma State. Never really thought you had it, Penn State. I never really did trust your defense, USC. Goodbye … Alabama?

Wait, hold on, Bama lost?

Things got real in Week 7, as the roster of college football unbeatens was cut by 40% from a Fabulous 15 down to a Nasty Nine. And since the games only get harder from here (with the exception of Tennessee going from playing Bama to UT Martin, anyway), there are likely more losses on the near horizon. We get another battle of undefeateds this weekend when Clemson hosts Syracuse, while three other unblemished teams play games that could be deemed relative toss-ups. The Nasty Nine could be down to the Superb Six or so very soon.

Let's rank the unbeatens!

(By the way, let's give a quick hat tip to Colorado. While we know the number of college football unbeatens will slowly drift down toward zero, the Buffaloes' overtime win over Cal on Saturday assured that we will not have any FBS teams finishing with zero wins this season. Good. Fielding a football team is really difficult, and no one deserves to go winless. Everybody should get to celebrate at least once.)

9. Syracuse

SP+ and FPI rankings: 38th and 24th, respectively

Odds of reaching 12-0, per SP+: 1.1% (last week: 1.3%)

What they did in Week 7: Defeated No. 15 NC State 24-9. An increasingly impressive Orange defense was too much for the Wolfpack and backup quarterback Jack Chambers, and an increasingly impressive Orange offense averaged 7.2 yards per play against an awesome State defense. The former wasn't particularly surprising; the latter was. Only a pair of Garrett Shrader interceptions kept this one close. Impressive performance.

• Week 8 opponent: At Clemson (SP+ win probability: 30%)

Biggest strength: We don't yet know how good they are. I grant that this is a weird strength, but go with me on this one: The Orange were projected 64th in SP+ this season but have overachieved SP+ projections in five of six games. The offense ranks 17th in average points per drive, and the defense ranks 10th in average points allowed per drive.

The schedule has undoubtedly been rather light for a power-conference team — their strength-of-schedule ranking, per SP+, is still just 87th, and they've beaten just one top-40 team — but we don't yet know their ceiling midway through the season. They've been good at pretty much everything.

Biggest weakness: The run defense isn't good enough. Syracuse ranks 95th in rushing success rate allowed this season and 99th in stuff rate (run stops at or behind the line), and the Orange haven't faced anyone who can actually run yet. But in their next four games, they face Clemson's Will Shipley, Notre Dame's Audric Estime, Pitt's Israel Abanikanda, and Florida State's Treshaun Ward and Trey Benson. The Cuse pass defense is stellar, but the Orange might be struggling to force teams to pass in the near future.