CFB Rankings: The Truths of College Football, A Week Later
Yesterday was nothing like last Saturday. There was so much upheaval and chaos last week, we are just now emerging to see the aftermath and its truths. Was last week a mere hiccup where the graph lines of different programs just happened to converge on one autumn weekend?
Yesterday was about answers and finding the truth. Here is what we learned.
Mississippi ain’t fucking around. Both Ole Miss and Mississippi State proved they were no fluke. Ole Miss completely manhandled Texas A&M on the road and Mississippi State took advantage of Auburn’s mistakes at home. Both teams emerged with 15-point victories and will probably bump off Florida State from the top of the AP poll. The final regular season game for both teams is the Egg Bowl which pits the two teams against one another. And there’s still an outside possibility that both teams will be undefeated for the Battle of the Golden Egg. But that’s still quite a bit away.
Alabama has problems. Watching the sidelines during the Alabama-Arkansas game was like watching a team implode into itself. Of course, ESPN seemed like they had a camera trained on offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin and another on head coach Nick Saban. The broadcast went like this: failed offensive play; cut to Lane talking into his headset walking in one direction; cut to Nicky looking irritated walking in the same direction as Lane. With a new quarterback, I expected Alabama to go down a notch. We saw that last week against Ole Miss. But man, against a still-up-and-coming Arkansas team, they looked pretty bad despite the 14-13 win.
Thank you for showing up UCLA In a match of the upset in the Rose Bowl, UCLA just got their asses handed to them by Oregon. Of all of the Noon PT games, this was the one I was most interested in. Then watching UCLA’s futility on both sides of the ball, I switched over to Auburn-Mississippi State. That 42-30 loss was a pretty sorry exhibition by the Bruins. But at least we can move on with our lives. In 1998, UCLA was one game away from playing in the first BCS Championship Game until they laid an egg against the Hurricanes. At least this time, they let their fans off the hook in Week 7. But for those who know, no one really expected them to be a championship-caliber team did they? Nah. And how about defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich getting into head coach Jim Mora’s face? HA!
There are a lot of other things, but for the sake of brevity I’ll end it here. The Napkin Rankings really loves Notre Dame, but I suspect that has more to do with Notre Dame playing shitty Power-5 conference teams. They beat Michigan, Purdue, Syracuse and North Carolina which gave them an extra ranking point. Similarly Baylor is still ranked high, but they still have to play Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State. If they get through those three, then they justify their high ranking. Also Florida State is still hanging on, and they benefit from being in a shit conference.
So here are the rankings.
1. Notre Dame (12.5 points)
2. Baylor (12 points)
2. Mississippi State
4. Florida State (11.5 points)
5. Ole Miss (10.5 points)
6. Auburn (10 points)
6. Georgia
8. Oklahoma (9.5 points)
9. East Carolina (9 points)
9. Louisville
9. USC