College Football Rankings- Week 2
Yes, Alabama is third. I can hear the complaints already. There are two reasons for this. First, they absolutely eviscerated ULM over the weekend. Other teams are also taking big jumps after killing bad teams (Oregon, Arkansas, USC). I think the general public underrates how much signal can be taken from a result like that. Second, teams 2-15 are bunched pretty close together. The Tide would be only a touchdown favorite against 15th ranked Tennessee on a neutral field.
I have no idea what is going to happen in the SEC. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. The conference has a strange mix of no truly elite teams (although someone will likely separate themselves from the pack at some point) and many good ones. This is going to a be a rock fight.
Unlike the SEC, the top few teams are far ahead of everyone else here. The big risers this week are USC, who has killed two bad teams, and Illinois, who knocked off Duke on the road. On the other hand, Michigan nearly dropped out of the top 25 and UCLA looks awful.
There’s a 1/3 chance Clemson wins the ACC, a 1/3 chance Miami does, and a 1/3 chance someone else does. I’m still a bit more bullish on Florida State than my model and would probably put them third.
My model has not caught up to how bad Stanford is. They should be at the bottom of the conference.
I am all aboard the TCU bandwagon. Everyone is talking about how bad UNC looked in week 1 and no one is talking about how good TCU looked. Texas Tech and Utah are popular picks to win the league right now as well, there’s no surprise in the 2 and 3 spots.
Oklahoma State is my only power conference team outside the top 100. They should probably be outside the top 1000.
The importance of the Notre Dame/Texas A&M game cannot be understated. If the Irish win, they’re going to be on a pretty good course to the playoff. If they lose, they have to win out at a minimum.
South Florida is now the clear favorite to win the conference. Their schedule is manageable- they avoid Tulane in conference play. After the Miami game this week, they don’t play a team in my top 90 until October 25th.
Nearly every team in the Mountain West has been a disappointment. Perhaps the one exception is Fresno State, who is off to a strong 2-0 start. Boise State is still a bit ahead of the pack.
The East division will come down to James Madison and Old Dominion. The West division could go any number of ways- I bet on Troy in the preseason and will be hoping they can pull it out.
My model does not properly understand the Marshall/Southern Miss situation and is too high on the former and too low on the latter.
Ohio and Toledo both impressed in week 2 and are the clear class of the league. It’s a shame both teams lost close games in week 1, as they’d have outside playoff chances otherwise.
Liberty lost to Jax State last week which sent the league race into turmoil. My model is still crazy low on Western Kentucky, but otherwise this roughly makes sense.
