Well ranking Duke and Southern Cal didn’t work out too well, but then again the real poll had Mississippi State and Cincinnati so I guess you win some and lose some.
Real AP Poll:
- Alabama (61)
- Clemson
- Notre Dame
- LSU
- Michigan
- Texas – Maybe it is a Big 12 bias but does Texas have a good enough defense to beat any of the teams above them?
- Georgia
- Oklahoma
- Florida – Oh my the cocktail party is going to be awesome this year.
- UCF
- Ohio State
- Kentucky
- West Virginia
- Washington State – Who would have guessed that Wazzu actually playing defense would put them in a position for a conference title. Critics of the Pirate have been saying that for oh, about 15 years.
- Washington
- Texas A&M
- Penn State
- Iowa
- Oregon
- Wisconsin
- South Florida
- NC State – They only fell six places? That seems rather kind.
- Utah
- Stanford
- Appalachian State – Whoa. I’m going to need to do some computation on this because they were not a club I was expecting to see ranked anytime soon. Awesome story, but let’s find out if the more important poll agrees with the “real” poll.
Dropped: Cincinnati (20), Mississippi State (22), Michigan State (24)
Receiving Votes: Texas Tech, Utah State, San Diego State, Fresno State, Miami (FL), Virginia, Houston, Purdue, Michigan State, Cincinnati, Auburn, Boston College, Mississippi State (why?), UAB
Josh’s Top 25:
- Alabama
- UCF – Four touchdown road win without their starting quarterback. Enough said.
- Clemson
- Notre Dame
- Oklahoma
- LSU
- Michigan
- Georgia
- Texas
- Ohio State
- Penn State
- Kentucky – 10/11/12 are all deeply talented yet deeply flawed. OSU’s defense just gives up too many big plays. Penn State takes naps on both sides of the ball resulting in a good team but consistent B+ play instead of A play. Kentucky’s defense and Benny Snell are amazing but can they pass it well enough?
- Florida
- Stanford
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Miami (FL)
- Washington State – I had them climb 2 spots. Not a lot, but consistent with how I do my poll. Here’s the nice thing: they still have Washington and Stanford on the slate. Win those and they climb. UGA and Florida play each other – one will drop. UGA and Kentucky play each other – one will drop. PSU and Michigan play each other, Bama and LSU play each other, etc. etc. You get the idea. Wazzu still has plenty of time to climb how I set up my poll.
- Oregon
- Texas A&M
- Wisconsin
- Iowa
- -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 spot(s) all willy nilly. I had a reader say that this section wasn’t very clear so I’ll try to 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 (bad games could be narrow wins over bad opponents, a blowout loss, or a stunning upset). 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
I had been pretty hard on Cincy’s strength of schedule and did not have them ranked, but what about the team that just knocked them from the ranks of the unbeaten, Temple? They have recovered nicely to win five of six but they started 0-2 with losses to a FCS team and that good Buffalo squad. Temple won’t be ranked anytime soon. That leaves 6-1 Houston and 7-0 South Florida as the teams with the best shot to be ranked. I don’t love either team’s strength of schedule so I’m going to use the eye test. USF barely wins each week. It is impressive to be 7-0 but I don’t see them being one of the best 25 teams. Houston has faced several teams that USF has and beaten them more handily.
AAC Nominee: Houston
Atlantic Coast Conference
So I had Duke ranked a week ago. I still like their resume but with a 1-2 mark in their last three and the offense struggling, they are going to fall out of the greatest poll online. I also had NC State ranked a week ago although I was much softer on the Wolfpack than the real poll by ranking them 22nd instead of 16th. At no point against Clemson did they look like one of the 25 best teams in football. They’re also out. That leaves the two Virginia schools and BC sniffing around. BC has a head-to-head loss to NC State and Tech hasn’t been in my poll for a bit now and could barely beat North Carolina. That leaves Virginia. I know they have a head-to-head loss to NC State but they do have wins over Miami and Duke the last two weeks. That is more impressive than any victory the Wolfpack have.
ACC Nominee: Virginia
Conference USA
Two upstarts sit atop the divisions with FIU and UAB looking solid through seven games each. FIU has a had a bit tougher schedule but UAB has the better record. Unfortunately for Butch Davis’ panther squad, I’m going with the Blazers due to the record and beating both Louisiana Tech and North Texas.
C-USA Nominee: UAB
Mountain West Conference
Hawai’i is still a fun team but with back-to-back losses it could be a while before they get another look. Boise State finally passed the eye-test with their victory over Colorado State but they have two losses and none of the other teams I really considered has that many so it comes down to Utah State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. I think USU and Fresno have really separated themselves from SDSU’s plodding style. Fresno is the better team statistically, but they haven’t had a win as good as Utah State’s victory at BYU yet.
MTW Nominee: Utah State
Southeastern Conference
Auburn’s win over Ole Miss wasn’t enough for me to look at them and I haven’t been buying the Mississippi State kool-aid much this year. Ole Miss did get a look last week, but after losing to Auburn, no such luck this week.
SEC Nominee: No One
Sun Belt Conference
Troy was off so no chance to make amends for losing to Liberty. That leaves just Georgia Southern and Appalachian State as the viable teams to get ranked. Southern is 6-1 and Appy is 5-1. While both teams are on fire, the Mountaineers have more dominant victories over common opponents, played better against a power-five team, and are the more efficient team numbers wise.
Sun Belt Nominee: Appalachian State
Elimination Time
The above five teams join Army, Buffalo, Purdue, Texas Tech, and Utah to form a master list of ten teams trying to get into the best poll the internet has. The first criteria I will look at is who has played FCS teams and then look at any bad games.
FCS Much?…Most of the teams have stepped down for a game but no one is more impacted than UAB. Their 6-1 mark gets readjusted to 5-1 and they have faced zero power-five clubs. Only Tulane of the AAC could even be considered a moment UAB punched up. Combine that with getting blown out by Coastal Carolina, the Blazers just aren’t worthy of a ranking quite yet.
Bad Game(s)…I would love to rank Purdue, I really would. This is a Big Ten blog, they are on fire with four straight wins and just took it to Ohio State. The problem is their body of work. They started 0-3 with one of those loses to Eastern Michigan. Boilers have a great chance next week at Michigan State to get to 5-3 and work their way into the rankings but this isn’t a poll on who had one of the 25 best performances last week, it is a poll on who has done the most over the course of the season to be ranked and unfortunately, Purdue still has those early losses on their rapidly improving resume.
Final Eight
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.
- Appalachian State
- BW: at Arkansas State
- WW: FCS
- BL: at Penn State (by 7)
- WL: N/A
- Army
- BW: at Buffalo
- WW: San Jose State
- BL: at Oklahoma (by 7)
- WL: at Duke (by 20)
- Buffalo
- BW: at Temple
- WW: FCS
- BL: N/A
- WL: Army (by 29)
- Houston
- BW: Arizona
- WW: FCS
- BL: at Texas Tech (by 14)
- WL: N/A
- Texas Tech
- BW: at Oklahoma State, at TCU, or Houston
- WW: FCS
- BL: West Virginia (by 8)
- WL: Ole Miss (by 20)
- Utah
- BW: at Stanford
- WW: FCS
- BL: at Washington State (by 4)
- WL: Washington (by 14)
- Utah State
- BW: at BYU
- WW: FCS
- BL: at Michigan State (by 7)
- WL: N/A
- Virginia
- BW: Miami or at Duke
- WW: FCS
- BL: at NC State (by 14)
- WL: at Indiana (by 4)
The first thing that caught my eye was just how bad Houston’s schedule has been. When Arizona is your best win, ya got some issues. Throw in a head-to-head loss to a fellow team vying for this poll and you see UH’s arguments break down. Good team, just not quite there yet.
The next team to go is unfortunately Virginia. I really like this team’s defense. They’re nasty on that side of the ball and their offense is rapidly improving. The problem is they have a head-to-head loss to a team I didn’t consider ranking, have another loss to a manageable Indiana team, and with the FCS win they’re actually 4-2. LOVE their last two wins, just need to see the Woos keep it up with four winnable dates before the big Commonwealth Cup game at Tech this year.
This leaves six teams for three spots. I’m going to bring in some more data for this. I will look at two things. The first is what are their FBS opponents’ W-L overall. The other thing will be to pull out any FBS wins and look at those teams W-L. This will show how tough a team’s schedule is overall and how tough their wins have actually been.
- Appalachian State
- Overall: 17-18 (.486)
- Wins only: 12-16 (.429)
- Army
- Overall: 31-22 (.585)
- Wins only: 20-19 (.513)
- Buffalo
- Overall: 22-30 (.423)
- Wins only: 17-28 (.378)
- Texas Tech
- Overall: 25-17 (.595)
- Wins only: 15-13 (.536)
- Utah
- Overall: 28-16 (.636)
- Wins only: 16-13 (.552)
- Utah State
- Overall: 17-27 (.386)
- Wins only: 13-24 (.351)
This is why I love data. On the surface, you would assume the Mountain West team is playing the much harder schedule compared to a Sun Belt or MAC school but so far the Aggies are just taking care of business against over-matched clubs. Maybe they get ranked before it, but it will be difficult for Utah State to be ranked prior to that big Boise State game in the regular season finale.
Buffalo is in a similar position. Watching the Bulls and Aggies is fun. They are solid teams but the numbers so far indicate that they are feasting on teams they should beat. UB Bulls have four more games before the MAC title game. If they win out and finish 12-1 with a league title, they’ll be in for sure – they just aren’t quite back from that Army defeat.
This has knocked us down to four teams for three spots and it is pretty hard to find a reason to boot out Utah. They have the highest opponent winning percentage in both wins and overall. They have also scored 40 or more each of the last three games. Quite the turn around in Salt Lake City.
Texas Tech is also going to get in. Their worst loss was week one and they have improved mightily since then. Their defense is playing much better and they have three wins that are all strong. I also acknowledge this is super risky for my poll as their next three games are at Iowa State, Oklahoma, and Texas. If they stay ranked, they will for sure have earned it.
That leaves Appalachian State and Army. I could totally cop out and have a tie, thus ranking 26 teams but that is more insulting to one of these schools than not. App State has the better statistical rankings and their schedule, while not as good as Army’s, hasn’t been that bad. I was looking for reasons to knocked them out early just to laugh at the AP but I can’t. They’re a solid team. I also recognize that Army has not one but two FCS teams on their remaining schedule as well as facing Liberty in week two. That’s not a great look.
The problem I have with Appy is they only scheduled one power-five team. Army took on two. Appy had a game against a bigger league (C-USA) canceled, Army has played two Mountain West and MAC teams. Appy is playing great ball, but they are mostly just picking on their own league and within the Sun Belt neither Georgia Southern nor Troy have been faced yet. Finally, Army took it to the Bulls. Buffalo is a solid, solid team. Knocking off 7-1 Buffalo is more impressive than beating 4-3 Arkansas State.
Final Verdict:
23. Utah
24. Texas Tech
25. Army
League Breakdown:
6 – SEC
5 – Big Ten, Pac 12
4 – Big 12
2 – ACC, Independent
1 – American
Big Ten and Counting 