Oh the polls, how much I love to argue with you but I take delight in LSU randomly being ranked. I know Southern Miss has a nice club but does beating them warrant jumping in? Guess we’ll find out. Here’s how I stack ’em up, hypocritical and all.
Real AP Poll:
- Alabama (60)
- Ohio State
- Michigan (1)
- Clemson
- Washington
- Texas A&M – The Aggies head to Alabama in is the biggest game for the program since Jackie Sherrill or R.C. Slocum paced the sidelines. No pressure!
- Louisville
- Nebraska – Survived a trap game after an injury filled bye week and then get Purdue to try and freshen up before a title run heads to Madison.
- Baylor
- Wisconsin
- Houston
- West Virginia – Smells like a tournament sleeper here. If they win out to go 12-0 with the Big 12 title they will obviously take care of Baylor but keep in mind…Alabama/A&M play, OSU/UM play, Clemson/Houston play, Nebraska/Wisconsin play PLUS conference title games for several of these clubs.
- Florida State
- Boise State
- Florida
- Oklahoma – Their best win is still Texas and newsflash, Texas is still Texas. Until OU shows anything against Baylor or WVU, it is tough to buy much stock in this team.
- Arkansas
- Tennessee
- Utah
- Western Michigan
- Auburn
- North Carolina – This team is a lot better when playing the Hurricanes instead of playing in a hurricane.
- Ole Miss
- Navy
- LSU
My Top 25:
- Alabama
- Ohio State
- Michigan
- Washington
- Clemson
- Louisville – These two ACC teams seem the same after such a close game and then this week: UL had an uninspired game against Duke and Clemson should have lost to NC State. Clemson’s best player in that game was NC State’s kicker.
- Texas A&M
- Wisconsin
- Baylor
- Houston – Flipped these teams because UH tried their hardest to lose to Tulsa. This is now two sloppy performances in back to back weeks and survived to go 1-1 when they could easily have a 0-2 mark.
- Nebraska – Like I said last week, they have faced just one team over .500 and that is Wyoming. Can’t wait to see the Huskers in two weeks at Madison.
- Florida State – I have ranked Wake twice this season so I’m buying the vastly improved Demon Deacons as a solid team, so I have no problem with FSU surviving that game.
- Western Michigan – The Broncos held Northwestern to 21 points. NU just dropped 54 on Michigan State.
- Boise State
- West Virginia
- Auburn
- Florida
- Arkansas
- Tennessee
- Ole Miss
- Troy
- North Carolina
- Navy
- – 25. SEE BELOW – Final Verdict
See Below – What the hell is that?
This is the most prestigious rankings on the internet, I can’t just give teams the final spots all willy nilly. I had a reader say that this section wasn’t very clear so I’ll try and state the process more clearly. Since many leagues will have a ton of teams on my radar, I only take one team from each league to start with. On rare exceptions, I’ll take more than one team but for the most part, I really try and weed out within leagues first. Then I see if my final selections have played any FCS teams or have had a bad game (for example a 3-0 win by a SEC school over a .500 Sun Belt team would qualify or a lopsided loss would count as a bad game). After those first two criteria, I take the remaining teams and examine their best win, worst win, best loss, and worst loss to make the final selections.
American Athletic Conference
South Florida and Memphis remain hot and Tulsa just took Houston to the absolute limit. Tulsa’s two losses are OSU and Houston. That is impressive. Sadly their four wins are all terrible FBS teams and one FCS club. Since USF and Memphis each have a 20 point road loss to good power 5 teams, I’ll just look at their road wins (USF 2 vs Memphis’ 1), Power conference wins (1 to 1), where those games were played (road for USF, home for Memphis), and margin of victory (USF 24.6 to Memphis’ 29).
That last stat isn’t great though because of a 77-3 romp for the Tigers. I adjusted it and took out the largest and narrowest victory and they came out like so: USF 24.25 and Memphis had 21.3 so on average, USF is beating teams by a pinch more. I like Memphis and I think they will be ranked soon, but in terms of this week: a final bit of eye test in action. USF crushed Syracuse…a team that just took down a well regarded Virginia Tech club.
AAC Nominee: USF
Atlantic Coast Conference
Miami, Wake and Tech were ranked a week ago so I’m keeping their resumes on file. I didn’t love ranking the Hokies a week ago, feeling a goofy hurricane weather win over UNC didn’t really reflect how this team had looked in other weeks. They’re out. Miami faced no one before their games against FSU and UNC. They are 0-2 against real competition. They’re gone. That leaves Wake who has a resume I still LOVE. I really want to see them stacked up against more candidates for this poll. As for Pitt, they’ve won three straight to get back into some discussion, but none of their wins have been good enough to quite get over the hump; however, if Penn State keeps winning, watch out for Pitt to benefit.
ACC Nominee: Wake Forest
Big 12
Has Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, or TCU done enough to get out of purgatory yet? TCU is a big fat no. They are like Miami. 4 wins against nobodies and then 0-2 against real competition. Both Oklahoma schools have two losses but the Cowboys’ are much weaker than their rival’s (Central Michigan and Pitt stacked up against Houston and Ohio State). I’m not sure I’ll rank the Sooners, but much like Wake, they deserve their resume to go up against the rest of the nation,
Big 12 Nominee: Oklahoma
Big Ten
Wisconsin is a top ten team with 2 losses and Ole Miss is still ranked with 3 so Iowa, Minnesota, and Penn State were all looked at. Penn State has a 49-10 loss which is extremely difficult to overcome unless you have an absurd rank already (see Tennessee). Iowa has a loss to a FCS school. Granted NDSU is very good, but considering the Bison just lost to a conference rival, its safe to say Iowa hasn’t worked their way back. Minnesota has two losses this year…Penn State and Iowa. Two teams I just said weren’t good enough to be ranked.
Big Ten Nominee: No One
Mid American Conference
Oh the Mighty MAC! In addition to Western Michigan’s run, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, and Toledo all have five wins right now. Eastern has the weakest resume with a loss to Toledo and a blowout defeat to Missouri but they did knock off Wyoming, hats off to a strong season at the midway point, but not rank-able yet. Central has the win at Oklahoma State but didn’t look very worthy of a ranking in their two losses. That leaves us with Toledo who is a two point road loss at BYU away from being undefeated. They’ll get the nod.
MAC Nominee: Toledo
Pacific 12 Conference
One of the most confusing conferences has a jumbled up mess right now. Washington State, Utah, Colorado, USC, and Arizona State all have various arguments to be made. ASU’s is the weakest with a 1-2 stretch the last three weeks and both losses being ugly. USC has won three straight but still have three losses. The Alabama game was brutal and the way Stanford has slipped, that loss is not as forgivable. WSU lost to a FCS team and only one of their wins is against a team above .500. Utah and Colorado both have great arguments so every now and then I will let multiple teams advance. I’ll make that exception here, too.
Pac 12 Nominee: Colorado and Utah
Elimination Time
The above six teams join Army, BYU, LSU, and San Diego State to create a list of ten clubs looking for the final two spots in the poll. The first criteria I will look at is who has played FCS teams and then look at any bad games.
FCS Much…Everyone but Oklahoma and BYU have faced a FCS member institute at this point in the season. None have losses to them but SDSU has that win as well as wins over 1-6 Northern Illinois and 1-6 Fresno State. That unholy trinity of strength of schedule hits will not overcome the loss to South Alabama.
Bad Game(s)…Army blew a fourth quarter lead to the Buffalo Bulls, a 1-5 team. Never good to be that one, see ya, Knights! South Florida has a 20 point loss at Florida State. Does FCS, Northern Illinois, at Syracuse, at Cincy, ECU, or UConn do enough to overcome that big a margin? It doesn’t for me. Bon voyage Bulls. Speaking of 20 point losses…Oklahoma lost by 21 at home to Ohio State.
Do Sooner wins against ULM, at TCU, Texas, and Kansas State get them back from it? The AP voters certainly think so. I’m not as quick. The KSU game was their first complete game all year where the offense AND defense both played well (other than ULM). I want to see them string some efforts like that together before I put them back in my rankings. They’re super close though, don’t worry readers in Norman.
Final Six
From ten teams down to six and then slotted into just two final poll positions. For this I try to just look at a couple of games: each team’s best win, worst win, best loss (i.e. a moral victory), and worst loss.
- BYU
- BW: at MSU
- WW: Arizona
- BL: at Utah (by 1)
- WL: UCLA (by 3)
- Colorado
- BW: Arizona State
- WW: FCS
- BL: at USC (by 4)
- WL: at Michigan (by 17)
- LSU
- BW: Missouri
- WW: FCS
- BL: Wisconsin (by 2) or at Auburn (by 5)
- WL: N/A
- Toledo
- BW: at Eastern Michigan
- WW: FCS
- BL: at BYU (by 2)
- WL: N/A
- Utah
- BW: USC
- WW: FCS
- BL: N/A
- WL: at Cal (by 5)
- Wake Forest
- BW: TIE: at Indiana, at Duke, Syracuse
- WW: FCS
- BL: at FSU (by 9)
- WL: at NC State (by 17)
The first thing that jumps out is Toledo’s best win just does not stack up. Everyone else has not only a best win over a power league school but multiple wins over power league schools. The fact that two of BYU’s opponents – Michigan State and UCLA – continue to free fall, BYU’s best win and worst loss both get that much weaker in the case of the win and damaging for the loss.
LSU looks like a lot of other teams I’ve pointed out, including Miami as the best example. 4-0 against nobodies and 0-2 against real foes. Granted the Tigers two losses were extremely tight but they aren’t there yet. They get Ole Miss next so they have a great opportunity to make some noise that isn’t re-scheduling or Les Miles related.
The final three teams all have great arguments but very different cases. Colorado’s is the eye test. They have dominated when they win. They have a 44-7 win (Colorado State), a 47-6 win (Oregon State), and a 40-16 win (Arizona Stat) to go along with the Oregon and FCS level win. Utah has the best record of these three teams but the worst loss of the group and lack a signature win. Utes fans would point out that Colorado doesn’t have a signature win either, but UC has the style points to gloss over that. That is just a fact of college football life. Blowouts impress us. Wake’s argument hinges on road wins being difficult (Utah also has two road wins, but only one is a power five compared to Wake’s two) and that Duke, Indiana, and Syracuse are all teams better than their record would indicate. You know what this means, let’s look at opponents’ combined win-loss. The number in the parenthesis is the W-L for opponents that UC, UU, and WF defeated:
- Colorado: 24-21 (14-18)
- Utah: 18-26 (15-23)
- Wake: 23-22 (14-18)
Woof, Utah…what happened? Overall Utah’s opponent’s W-L is well below .500. In terms of their opponents’ W-L in games that Utah wins, it sits at just .3947 winning percentage. Both Colorado and Wake are at .4375, which doesn’t sound like a huge amount but it 1.1 times better. 10% in statistics is a big swing. In baseball a 90 wins is plenty games above .500 and puts in you great position for the playoffs. 81 wins, or 1.1 times less is .500. In elections 10% can be a landslide. US voter turnout is 60% of a population of nearly 319 million. That means over 190 million people vote. If a candidate wins by 10 percent, that means the winner had 18 MILLION more votes. 18 million is more than double the size of New York City…so yeah, Wake and Colorado have much better resumes even without as many wins as Utah.
FINAL VERDICT:
24. Colorado
25. Wake Forest
League Breakdown:
7 – SEC
5 – ACC
4 – Big Ten
2 – American, Big 12, Pac 12
1 – MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt
Big Ten and Counting 