The rankings mentioned below differ somewhat from the ones we have been discussing in previous weeks, because the official rankings came out for the first time this week. A lot of teams came up with very different results. Houston, for example was #17 in the AP poll, but could not crack the official rankings at all. As it turns out, the official rankers were correct, because Houston lost this week to a team with a losing record.)
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Well, there goes our hope that somebody would give Alabama a game. LSU was ranked #3 in the nation, and couldn’t even score a friggin’ field goal against ‘Bama. Final score 29-zip.
LSU’s humbling loss means that Michigan will join the Fantastic Four. Michigan was ranked #5 and they won 42-7 over the 14th-ranked team, so they clearly will advance at least up to #4, possibly even #3, depending on how the voters feel about Notre Dame’s schedule. The Wolverines also have two pretty easy games coming up, so they should be able to hold their place for a while, at least until they have to play OSU in Columbus.
Georgia is still a legitimate contender to make the playoff. They were ranked #6 and beat the #9 team 34-17. I suppose they will move up to the #5 spot.
As I think we all expected, Utah was nowhere near as good as their #15 ranking, and got soundly trounced by unranked ASU.
Once again, there will be plenty of changes at the bottom of the list. The following teams lost: 3, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 25. Next week’s versions of Utah, that is to say the teams that are not as good as their ranking, will include Syracuse, and Cincinnati. (Syracuse was #19, and will probably crack the top 15. Cincinnati defeated Navy 42-0, which is a much worse drubbing than Notre Dame gave the Midshipmen, and they are 8-1, so the Bearcats will probably claw their way back into the rankings. They would love to forget that loss to Temple, which marred their otherwise perfect season.)