At the outset, let me say that while most of us spent the weekend doing many things, among them watching football, some more important things were happening in our country. Those people effected by the Hurricane are in all of our prayers, I am sure. They are certainly in mine. I was at least happy to see the game still played between Georgia and South Carolina on Sunday. Not so with Florida and LSU. I was very tempted to ding both for their seeming refusal to play and use this natural disaster to avoid a potential loss (the way I see it) but in the end, I allowed the numbers to speak for themselves with a few wise corrections.
There was quite a bit of movement by the top 25 teams in my ranking, caused mainly by a slew of upsets and losses. One will be readily apparent once you see my list, so let's get to it:
- Alabama (6-0)
- Ohio State (5-0)
- Clemson (6-0)
- Michigan (6-0)
- Washington (6-0)
- Texas A&M (6-0)
- Louisville (4-1)
- Wisconsin (4-1)
- Tennessee (5-1)
- Nebraska (5-0)
- Baylor (5-0)
- West Virginia (4-0)
- Boise State (5-0)
- Arkansas (4-1)
- Virginia Tech (4-1)
- Florida (4-1)
- Western Michigan (6-0)
- Miami (4-1)
- Mississippi (3-2)
- Georgia (4-2)
- North Carolina (4-2)
- Florida State (4-2)
- Auburn (4-2)
- Arizona State (5-1)
- Utah (5-1)
You may immediately notice that 5-1 Houston has fallen out completely. Why you may ask? Well, who have they beat? And who did they lose to? If you include Houston at 5-1, then don't you have to include Navy sitting at 4-1? And if you include Navy, then shouldn't 4-1 Air Force be included since they gave Navy their only loss? Head to head matters, especially when you have the same record at this point in the season. It is arguable that Navy's win this weekend is a better win than Houston's victory over Oklahoma so early on. It is clear the pollsters still look at that. I do not considering where Oklahoma is now. Beating Texas this weekend is nothing to write home about.
Of course, there was another sticky situation as the polls came out today and I began to compute the numbers. It is clear the pollsters are still very high on Ole Miss, and to some extant on Florida State, especially after they beat Miami on Saturday. But those teams are both sitting there at 2 losses each. In a perfect world, one would still have the Seminoles ranked higher. But they also lost North Carolina...who lost to Georgia...who lost to Ole Miss. I will admit that the order I placed them is not perfect, but I will repeat my thoughts from last week - I think Ole Miss is the best 2 loss team in the country. I then just allowed the head to heads follow on that. Auburn is in there only because the polls seem to like them. Their two losses do come from two top 10 teams, so perhaps I should have jumped them ahead of the rest. But their best victory is over LSU, who might still be high in the voters minds, but not so much in mine (especially after this weekend.)
This coming weekend will see some high profile match-ups with Alabama traveling to Tennessee and Ohio State going to Wisconsin. Our two loss teams will see some thinning hopefully with Arkansas/Ole Miss and Miami/North Carolina on the slate and there are some interesting Pac-12 games to watch (if you can stay up that late.) It's homecoming at Georgia so there is that as well. Back next week to try and sort it all out. That is all.
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