Michigan won the game on a Hail Mary and got dropped out of the AP Top 25 anyway. Why?

Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood (19) talks with Chris Bracy (7) after an NCAA college football game against the Western Michigan Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Ann Arbor, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

2026-09-09T11:10:06Z

Michigan won the game against Western Michigan but lost most of its support in The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll.

Just like many viewers Saturday night, Top 25 voters were confused when one second was put back on the clock after it appeared time had run out at Michigan Stadium. And they were dazed when JJ Buchanan came down with Bryce Underwood’s second Hail Mary pass to turn the four-touchdown-underdog Broncos’ 12-7 upset into a 13-12 loss.

The Mid-American Conference submitted appeals to the NCAA and the College Football Playoff administration asking for the result to be overturned to let the record show the Broncos actually won the game for purposes of rankings, evaluations and selection deliberations. The NCAA said its rules don’t allow a move like that and the CFP won’t release its first rankings until November.

Top 25 voters have weighed in, though.

The Wolverines dropped from No. 16 in the preseason poll to out of the Top 25 altogether in the first regular-season poll. It was the biggest fall from ranked to unranked after a win since at least 2008.

Michigan had appeared on all 69 preseason ballots and was listed as high as No. 10 on one. The Wolverines were on just 22 ballots Tuesday.

Bob Asmussen of the Champaign (Illinois) News-Gazette, in his 16th year as a voter, put Michigan No. 12 on his preseason ballot and said he knew that was a mistake as he watched Michigan’s offense sputter after scoring on its first possession. Voters sometimes hesitate to penalize a team that wins, but Michigan was going to drop off Asmussen’s ballot regardless. Forty-six other voters agreed with him.

“I saw them lose in my mind, but they didn’t technically lose,” Asmussen said. “It was so easy to drop them because of how horrible they were.”

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Kirk Bohls of the Houston Chronicle, in his fourth decade as a voter, had Michigan No. 20 on his preseason ballot but said the Wolverines looked nothing like a Top 25 team. Bohls said he was disturbed by the way the end of the game played out, and the Big Ten’s statement about why 1 second was put on the clock after it showed zeroes didn’t convince him.

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“We were all watching and the Big Ten told us don’t believe what you just saw with your eyes, and it’s kind of hard to unsee that,” Bohls said.

Bohls said he’ll be curious as to how the CFP selection committee will look at the game if Michigan ends up under consideration for an at-large playoff bid.

“Some people probably on the selection committee might view it as a loss or at the very least a tainted victory,” he said. “It could ultimately be a tie-breaker that goes against Michigan.”

Lots of choices for No. 1

Ohio State is No. 1 by a wide margin going into its showdown at No. 4 Texas this weekend but there is far from universal agreement on which team is best in the land.

Seven teams received first-place votes, the most since the same number got first-place votes in the 2016 preseason poll. It’s the most in a regular-season poll since seven teams got first-place votes Sept. 2, 2014.

No. 8 LSU’s five first-place votes made the Tigers the lowest-ranked team to get at least one since ninth-ranked Texas A&M on Oct. 11, 2015. LSU hammered Clemson 51-10 in Lane Kiffin’s first game as coach.

SEC flex

The Southeastern Conference occupies seven of the top 12 spots in the poll with No. 2 Georgia, No. 4 Texas, No. 8 LSU, No. 9 Mississippi, No. 10 Texas A&M, No. 11 Oklahoma and No. 12 Alabama. The SEC has a total of nine ranked teams with No. 18 Tennessee and No. 23 Missouri.

The SEC is the only conference to ever have seven teams in the top 12. The SEC also had that many in the top 12 the week of Oct. 5, 2025.

The Big Ten’s 1-2 punch was short-lived: Ohio State and Oregon had given the Big Ten the top two teams in the preseason rankings for the first time in 65 years. The Buckeyes did their part to stay No. 1 with their rout of Ball State. The Ducks, tied with Boise State in the middle of the fourth quarter before winning 34-27, dropped to No. 6.

Still, the Big Ten has seven ranked teams with No. 5 Indiana, No. 14 USC, No. 16 Penn State, No. 19 Washington and No. 21 Iowa joining Ohio State and Oregon.

Extra points

The Group of Six, which has not had a Top 25 team yet this season, does have Boise State with the most voting points among unranked teams while Memphis has the fifth-most. Those teams meet in Boise, Idaho, on Saturday for a game that could have major CFP implications. ... No. 7 Miami is ranked in the top 10 in a Week 1 in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2003-04. ... Six Top 25 teams play opponents from the Football Championship Subdivision this week.

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ERIC OLSON Olson is an Associated Press college football writer based in Omaha, Nebraska. He also covers the Big Ten, the NCAA, the College Football Playoff alongside local teams Nebraska and Creighton. twitter mailto
Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:23:02 +0000

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An unnamed donor responds to global aid cuts with a record gift for the nonprofit Americares

Neal Flanagan, right, a research scientist at Duke University, uses a tool to take a soil sample from a peatland as Curt Richardson, an ecology professor at Duke, observes Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

2026-09-09T13:00:22Z

NEW YORK (AP) — A major American aid group is promising to deliver more medicines in high-need areas around the world after receiving its largest ever donation.

Americares, a nonprofit that supports thousands of health centers globally, announced a $50 million gift Wednesday from an unidentified Connecticut family. The contribution represents an unusual expansion at a time when the United States’ sudden aid cuts have hamstrung programs ranging from maternal and child health to HIV treatment and prevention.

“They definitely understood the moment and wanted to do more to respond to that,” Christine Squires, the president and CEO of Americares, said of the donor.

Individual philanthropists and charitable foundations have sought to plug some funding holes in the 18 months since President Donald Trump upended the U.S. Agency for International Development. A British billionaire funded nutritional peanut paste. Former USAID employees raised more than $125 million to buoy dozens of critical aid programs. The Gates Foundation narrowed its priorities.

Global health of all USAID’s targets has received much of the attention from big donors, according to Susan Appe, a University at Albany associate professor of public administration and policy who has researched how nonprofits deal with the changing whims of donor countries. That’s reasonable, she said, considering “lives are on the line.” Jeff Bezos’ parents, for example, committed up to $500 million last March for UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Fund.

Experts agree that high-net-worth donors could never save every program lost by the billions of dollars cut from U.S. spending on global health. But there was an expectation that more philanthropists would step up to support the causes advanced by USAID.

“I think that a lot of philanthropy scholars like myself have been a bit disappointed with the lag of response,” Appe said. “It’s kind of, to some degree, business as usual.”

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Americares, which Squires said had received about 10% of its funding from the U.S. government before the aid cuts, certainly felt the impact. Among their efforts that lost support last year was a maternal care project in Tanzania. Colombian medical clinics serving Venezuelan migrants closed after private funders kept them afloat for several months. A planned five-year collaboration to build a more robust medical supply chain across Gaza had to be scrapped.

Squires considers the group fortunate to have a robust-enough network that it now receives all of its funding from a mix of individual donors, corporations and private foundations. That’s important as the group responds to more than 20 emergencies including the Nepal floods and the Congo’s Ebola outbreak.

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In this particular case, Squires said the donor’s family has been involved with Americares for 30 years. They’re “very savvy” in their understanding of global health, she said.

Half of the new gift will power its goal to help 100 million people access quality healthcare by 2030 “in a time when that need is increasing,” according to Squires. That work involves providing additional medical supplies to their network of more than 4,000 health centers. They will focus especially on countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Latin America that lack funding and awareness. Americares also plans to increase support for U.S. health centers in states where they expect to see more residents without health insurance.

The other half will go toward Americares’ endowment, Squires said. She hopes the news of its record donation will inspire others. Investments of that size show “there are people who trust,” she said, in both Americares and the humanitarian sector overall.

“It’s not only up to individuals,” she said. “However, individuals who have the means, who have the passion and can invest like this, will help to bring others along. So, I’m excited and hopeful that this will spark more giving across the board.”

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

JAMES POLLARD Pollard covers philanthropy for The Associated Press with a focus on Gen Z’s giving habits and technology’s uses in charitable work. He is based in New York. twitter mailto
Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:23:02 +0000

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In North Carolina, a race is on to restore critical peatland before it dries up or is destroyed

Neal Flanagan, right, a research scientist at Duke University, uses a tool to take a soil sample from a peatland as Curt Richardson, an ecology professor at Duke, observes Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

2026-09-09T13:02:44Z

BELHAVEN, N.C. (AP) — The birds are up with the sunrise — warblers, flycatchers, sparrows and towhees calling across the treetops. Deer browse on tender buds emerging from dense shrubs. Black bears scrounge for roots, insects and other edibles.

It’s an idyllic setting in North Carolina’s Inner Banks, where fields of cotton, soybeans and corn stretch for miles, country roads wend through stands of pines and thousands of bird watchers converge to witness the spring migration.

But it’s what’s underground that has drawn scientists and investors to this 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract: spongy, dense peat up to 15 feet (5 meters) deep.

They’re here to save it.

Fifty miles (80 kilometers) of ditches dug decades ago for an abandoned farming venture drained much of the water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfires, altering its native habitats — and allowing it to emit 130,000 tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide a year.

“Our goal is for perpetuity to conserve these lands so they can’t become oil and gas fields, so they’re not mined for phosphorus or turned into parking lots and shopping centers,” said Tripp Wall, CEO of Colorado-based company Pantheon Regeneration. “They’re just these incredible systems that I feel are underappreciated here in the U.S. (that) for 10,000 to 15,000 years have been climatologically resilient until we screwed them up.”

Peatlands are a climate paradox. Though they account for just 3% of global land surface, they store one-third of the Earth’s carbon dioxide, more than all forests combined. But when degraded — primarily when farmers lower the water table to grow crops — destroyed or burned, they become part of the problem, releasing huge volumes of greenhouse gases, now about 6% of the annual global total from all sources.

And the type of peatlands found in North Carolina, and for hundreds of miles along the Eastern Seaboard, are among the most threatened in the world.

Read More

Pantheon plans to reverse the damage by blocking off ditches to control the water table and significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Then it will cull invasive species and replant native grasses, flowers and other plants.

The restoration is modeled after other projects by nonprofits and government agencies, including at the adjacent 175-square-mile (453-square-kilometer) Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge — one of the largest peatland restoration projects in the U.S. — which provides habitat for threatened and endangered species such as red wolves, yellow pitcher plants and Atlantic white cedar, and has become an important stopover for migrating birds such as Tundra swans.

But what sets apart Pantheon’s project is a plan to sell carbon credits to tech companies and other corporations that want to compensate for their own greenhouse gas emissions, then use the money to restore and preserve a million acres (1,562 square miles, or 4,047 square kilometers) of peatland from Virginia to northern Florida over the next decade.

Each property will be permanently conserved and rewilded — “big corridors, big birding habitats, big biodiversity hotspots that have an outsized impact on climate,” said Wall.

Ancient ecosystems under threat

Neal Flanagan pushes a metal tube through roots and around buried logs until it sinks about a meter (3 feet). When he pulls it out, it’s packed with black soil.

Near the surface, it’s dry and full of dead fibers from plants like wood fern, blueberry and Lyonia. The middle is crumbly, moist and odorless, with bits of charcoal from long-ago fires. But the saturated bottom, 50% carbon, is the consistency of axle grease.

“This is the black gold,” said Flanagan’s colleague, Duke University ecologist Curtis Richardson, as ancient peat oozes from his closed fist. Its “magnitude and importance cannot be underestimated,” he added.

When peatlands are intact, gases generated by decomposing plants are trapped in a waterlogged, oxygen-deprived environment, while surface vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, scientists say.

That makes ancient, intact peatlands a carbon vault up to 50 feet (15 meters) deep in some parts of the world. They also store about 10% of global fresh water, help control flooding and can help stem wildfires.

But two-thirds of temperate peatlands — mostly in Europe and the U.S. — have been dewatered, while about 45% of tropical peatlands have been similarly disturbed, according to a 2025 study published by The Society for Conservation Biology.

Boreal peatlands, or those in colder climates in places like Canada and Russia, are about 90% intact, but face growing pressure from thawing permafrost and intense fires, both linked to climate change, as well as mining and critical minerals exploration.

At the same time, only 17% of global peatlands are officially protected, according to the study.

In the U.S., significant amounts of peat are also found in Alaska, Florida, parts of the Northeast and the northern Great Lakes, though the type of domed peatlands found in North Carolina exist only along the Eastern Seaboard. Called Pocosin peat, it formed from coastal pine forests and evergreen shrubs that decayed over millennia.

In North Carolina alone, 11,000 miles (17,702 kilometers) of canals drain peatlands before the water empties into coastal estuaries, Richardson said.

Combined with climate change, that leaves them vulnerable to the greatest threat to peatlands globally: catastrophic fire.

Peatland fires can burn for months

Blackened tree trunks rise above a marshy area, the only sign that a fire burned almost 2,000 acres (809 hectares) here four years ago, lowering the ground by a foot and a half (0.5 meters) in some places.

It could have been worse, but the North Carolina Forest Service and other agencies extinguished it fairly quickly — in about three weeks — pumping water from nearby lakes to prevent it from spreading into the wildlife refuge, which borders Pantheon’s property on three sides.

A 2008 fire that began during a drought burned for three months above ground and smoldered for another four underground, damaging more than a quarter of the refuge and lowering the ground by several feet in some areas, refuge manager Sarah Toner said. In areas where water-level restoration had begun, though, the fire burned less deeply.

Saturated peatlands are nearly fireproof: Just the surface vegetation and a few inches of peat burn, which releases nutrients, regenerates seed banks and creates beneficial biochar. But when they’re dry, fire can burn underground for weeks or months — drying out and destroying even the saturated layers — emitting enormous volumes of carbon dioxide and destroying thousands of years of accumulation.

“We’ll lose 5, 6 feet of peat in a matter of weeks, which equates to millions of tons of carbon loss — ancient carbon loss that we simply can’t ever get back in human lifetimes,” Richardson said.

That’s why Pantheon is moving quickly to restore the North Carolina site, Wall said. Although the company hopes to also buy intact peatlands, its first priority is drained sites.

“There’s this urgency to start with what’s degraded now,” Wall said, “before it goes away.”

Project aims to restore native biodiversity

Steve Apfelbaum steers his SUV down grassy, rutted lanes, then hops out to listen intently, occasionally peering through binoculars. He smiles when he hears prairie warblers, a bird whose population is declining.

“We heard hundreds of them today,” said Apfelbaum, a plant and animal ecologist conducting breeding and migratory bird surveys at the site. “What that tells me is that this ecosystem is really important” for the species’ migration.

He hears Nashville warblers that call from the tops of trees, but nest in cavities in the peat.

Peatlands are key to helping preserve bird populations, which are declining across all habitats, said Apfelbaum: “All sorts of cool birds will be back.”

So will native reptiles, plants, fish and insects, said Vladimir Roosevelt, Pantheon’s operations director, who’s overseeing the restoration. The company already released a pair of red wolves a couple years ago that have since had pups.

Carbon credits, sometimes controversial, are central to the project

Carbon credits work like this: companies, governments or individuals seek to offset their carbon pollution by investing in projects, such as a peatland restoration, that capture carbon. Their effectiveness, however, has been questioned, as over the years some programs have been exposed as exaggerating how much carbon they were capturing or were simply fraudulent.

Pantheon says it’s aware of those concerns and guarantees high-quality, scientifically verified credits, based on Richardson’s decades of data on carbon loss at the site and ongoing measurements of groundwater levels and the use of sophisticated monitoring equipment, including a tower that measures how much gas is absorbed by and released from the site, as well as computer modeling and core sampling. Those results will be verified by an outside third party.

Investors including Microsoft are providing Pantheon the initial capital to acquire peatland, Wall said. Income from carbon credits — each credit represents a metric ton — will help fund future land purchases.

The changes will be exciting, Apfelbaum said. But everything comes down to first rewetting and restoring the peat, a natural climate solution often overshadowed by other efforts, including reforestation — important, he said, but not as effective.

“We’ve all been bear-hugged and distracted by trees,” Apfelbaum said, “when it’s really soil and peat that hold the most carbon.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

JOSHUA A. BICKEL Bickel is a video journalist on the Associated Press Climate and Environment team. He focuses on climate and agriculture, and is based in Cincinnati. twitter instagram mailto
Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:23:02 +0000

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Takeaways from AP story on a major effort to restore peatland in North Carolina

Curtis Richardson, an ecology professor at Duke University, holds peat soil Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

2026-09-09T13:07:17Z

BELHAVEN, N.C. (AP) — Investors and scientists are restoring a 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract of peatland in North Carolina’s Inner Banks to curb emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide and regenerate native habitat.

Fifty miles (80 kilometers) of ditches dug decades ago for an abandoned farming venture drained much of the water from thousands of years of accumulated peat — partially decayed organic matter up to 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep — leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfires, altering native habitats and allowing it to emit 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year.

Here are key takeaways from The Associated Press’ reporting:

Why are peatlands important?

Though they account for just 3% of the global land surface, peatlands store about one-third of the Earth’s carbon dioxide, more than all forests combined. But when degraded, destroyed or burned they become part of the problem, releasing huge volumes of greenhouse gases, now about 6% of the annual global total from all sources.

When peatlands are intact, gases generated by decomposing plants are trapped in a waterlogged, oxygen-deprived environment, while surface vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, scientists say.

They also store about 10% of global fresh water, help control flooding and can help stem wildfires, as well as provide important habitat for many species.

What’s happening to peatlands?

Two-thirds of temperate peatlands — mostly in Europe and the U.S. — have been dewatered for farming, mining and other uses, while about 45% of tropical peatlands have been similarly disturbed, according to a 2025 study published by The Society for Conservation Biology.

Boreal peatlands, in colder climates in places like Canada and Russia, are about 90% intact, but face growing pressure from thawing permafrost and intense fires, both linked to climate change, as well as mining and critical minerals exploration.

Read More

Saturated peatlands are nearly fireproof: Just the surface vegetation and a few inches of peat burn, releasing nutrients, regenerating seed banks and creating beneficial biochar.

But when they’re dry, fire can burn underground for weeks or months — drying out and destroying even saturated layers — emitting enormous volumes of carbon dioxide and destroying thousands of years of accumulation.

What’s happening in North Carolina?

In North Carolina, 11,000 miles (17,702 kilometers) of canals drain peatlands before the water empties into coastal estuaries. And the type of peatlands found there, and for hundreds of miles along the Eastern Seaboard, are among the most threatened in the world.

Colorado-based Pantheon Regeneration plans to restore its property by blocking off ditches to control the water table and significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Then it will cull invasive species and replant native grasses, flowers and other plants.

Pantheon plans to sell carbon credits to tech companies and other corporations that want to compensate for their own greenhouse gas emissions, then use the money to restore and preserve a million acres of peatland from Virginia to northern Florida over the next decade.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:23:02 +0000

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