Michigan ranked # 5 in the AP Poll
1 Alabama 8-0
2 Clemson 8-0
3 Notre Dame 8-0
4 Louisiana State 7-1
5 Michigan 7-1
6 Georgia 7-1
7 Oklahoma 7-1
8 Ohio State 7-1
9 Central Florida 7-0
10 Washington State 7-1
11 Kentucky 7-1
12 West Virginia 6-1
13 Florida 6-2
14 Penn State 6-2
15 Texas 6-2
16 Utah 6-2
17 Houston 7-1
18 Utah State 7-1
19 Iowa 6-2
20 Fresno State 7-1
21 Mississippi State 5-3
22 Syracuse 6-2
23 Virginia 6-2
24 Boston College 6-2
25 Texas A&M 5-3
NW is 27, MSU 29, Wisconsin is receiving votes
October 28th, 2018 at 2:18 PM ^
Nice to see a few 3 loss SEC teams crack the top 25...
October 28th, 2018 at 2:33 PM ^
One day, justice will be served and a winless SEC team will get in to the top 25. Because god dammit, those are all excellent losses...
October 28th, 2018 at 4:07 PM ^
Agreed. 2-7 R-Kansas should be ranked.
October 28th, 2018 at 5:16 PM ^
Here is an interesting visual representation of how each voter ranked the teams (other weekly polls also linked).
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/9s5o08/ap_poll_voter_consistency_week_10/
Neill Ostrout has UM as low as 9 (with UCF at 4, OSU at 6 and WSU at 8 in the same ballot).
October 28th, 2018 at 6:58 PM ^
Well that guy is, uh, something.
The other surprising thing is how many writers (12) have LSU ahead of Notre Dame
October 28th, 2018 at 8:36 PM ^
I have a feeling that Michigan's D would completely shut down UCF. It's sort of a sham they are in the top 10, IMO.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:20 PM ^
To be fair, Wisconsin has 3 losses, as does MSU and Northwestern. So it sorta makes sense. I don’t get how you can be ranked 21st (Texas A&M), lose and only fall 4 spots.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:45 PM ^
Miss St is a powerhouse and aTm only lost by 15. That’s how.
October 28th, 2018 at 5:31 PM ^
to be fair the teams from 26-40 are not worthy of top 25 maybe Washington but MSU,N Western etc are not top 25 teams right now
Others Receiving Votes:
Others receiving votes:Washington 120, Northwestern 86, Georgia Southern 62, Michigan St. 51, Cincinnati 45, Iowa St. 42, South Florida 29, Stanford 26, Oklahoma St. 24, UAB 17, Oregon 13, Wisconsin 12, Auburn 7, San Diego St. 6, Army 6, NC State 5, California 2, Buffalo 1.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:20 PM ^
Damn these cowards for not putting Kentucky in the top 10. Damn you all to hell.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^
I wanted it to happen as well. But I didn't want to hear, next Saturday night, "Georgia now has a win over a Top 10 team on the road, and consecutive wins over Top 10 teams away from home ..."
October 28th, 2018 at 2:49 PM ^
Well Kentucky has a legitimately elite defense and a good running game. Whether that win (assuming they do win) for UGA is a top ten, top 15, or top 20 win, it's a quality win regardless. Kentucky is legitimately the 3rd or 4th best team in the SEC.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:22 PM ^
That should tell you how deep the SEC is...
...There’s the Top tier— Alabama...
...the second tier: LSU, UGA, UF, Kentucky...
...then everyone else, including Auburn and Vanderbilt.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:30 PM ^
No, they aren't.
If not for a terrible pass interference call yesterday on what should have been the last play of the game, they lose to Missouri. They already lost to Texas A & M. Alabama, LSU, and Georgia are also clearly better.
Kentucky has benefited from an easy schedule so far and a Florida team that is much better now than it was early in the season. They're probably the 5th or 6th best team in the SEC.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:25 PM ^
The A&M game went to OT in A&M - I'm not convinced that A&M is better on a neutral field. Giving LSU the benefit of the doubt, I would rank the top half of the SEC:
1. Bama
2. UGA
3. LSU
4. Kentucky
5. Florida
6. Miss State
7. A&M
October 29th, 2018 at 1:57 AM ^
The advanced stats and "smart" people (analysts at the books) really do not like Kentucky so much so that Mizzou was favored last weekend, and UK got pretty lucky to win that. If that game happened again today, Mizzou would still be favored.
I am actually a little surprised the advanced stats don't like UK a little more. They beat Florida by two scores and Miss St by three TDs. And yet, they're 28th in FPI and 29th in S&P+. Guess the algorithms don't like when you only beat CMU by two TDs and Vandy by one TD at home.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:50 PM ^
It would be, but a win over "a Top 10 team" would fit too nicely into the incessant cliche machine that is CFP talk.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:23 PM ^
Penn St will be Michigans 4th top 25 opponent ( 3 top 15) with Ohio St still to come..YET despite what the CFP people tell you that means NOTHING...UCF which plays absulutely NOONE will be about ranked the same as Michigan tommorow just a few spots below...SOS is a joke and really means nothing..if Michigan had scheduled a cupcake instead of ND wed be 8-0 right now and I am tired of teams that play nobody getting rewarded and recognized
October 28th, 2018 at 2:27 PM ^
Sir, this is a Jet's take out counter.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:19 PM ^
You will listen and you will nod in approval! Now give me my cheesy bread!
October 28th, 2018 at 2:28 PM ^
UCF got jumped by an OSU team that, in the last two weeks, got housed by Purdue and then had a bye week, and you're saying they get too much respect? I'm not saying that they deserve to be higher, but it's pretty clear that voters have a hard ceiling when it comes to UCF because they haven't played anyone. When LSU loses to Alabama I'll bet they stay ahead of UCF, and you'll see Wazzu jump them as well if they keep winning.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:28 PM ^
Replace ND with Akron and we are undefeated and #4. Maybe even have a future loss that we can recover from given enough chaos. Bama will never drop below 4 as long as Saban is coaching, Clemson plays an entire season of Indianas, Purdues, Northwesterns, and Rutger. They are also on auto bid. If you want to be Bama-Clemson do what they do. There are 2 spots up for grabs every year.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:38 PM ^
Clemson played at TX A&M.
The ACC sucks this season because FSU and Louisville suddenly got way worse and Miami too. It hasn't been a cakewalk for them in recent years.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:45 PM ^
This^^^
System is broken. Bama plays 1 good team in regular season - LSU next week then maybe Georgia in champ game. Clemson will play nobody. We have to go through MSU OSU PSU gauntlet every year just to win division.
Polls should go away. Need 8 team playoff with Conference Champions only. ND needs to go ACC in football too. USF would get their shot.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:54 PM ^
I like the AP poll. It gives context for wins and losses, historically. It's a big deal for an underdog to beat a "Top 5" team in mid-October -- the rankings are a good, if not completely accurate, shorthand for the quality of opponent played. Remember when Carr was 10-0 against Top 10 teams? Without the rankings, that phenomenon would be hard to describe.
As long as it doesn't influence matchups on the field (like it once did) for playoffs or bowls, then I like preserving it.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:38 PM ^
Problem with polls is that you have people like Graham Crouch voting.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:03 PM ^
Correction, 8 teams with the best 8 teams, you start putting qualifiers like "conference champion" in there you could be looking at a lower ranked conference champ team with two losses and a cakewalk schedule passing up a B1G or SEC team or even ND that ran a gauntlet.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:28 PM ^
Bama played one good team last year, lost, and still played for the national title.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:30 PM ^
I think the simplest solution is you give the “Power 5” Auto-bids for conference champions (anywhere in the Top-6 or Top-8), then you hand out 1 or 3 “At Large” and then set up a Playoff Bracket— Final 6 gives “BCS” #1 and #2 Bye’s (Like NFL) 3v6, 4v5, THEN Re-Seed like the NHL used to do and have your 4-team finals.
You could even bring back the BCS Bowl Tie-ins if really needed PACvB1G for a spot, ACCvSEC for a spot in that “first round”... is first just implement the Final 6 before trying to add that in and confuse the humans that are the Committee.
October 28th, 2018 at 6:51 PM ^
If you expand the playoffs to eliminate the hardest choices, you will keep expanding them down the road. There will always be arguments about who should get in. There are a lot of arguments about the 68 team basketball tournament.
I think adding teams to the playoffs should be done if we really want to lengthen their season. As a fan, I like watching more games. If I was an advocate for the players, I'd take a different position. And even as a fan, I'm not really looking forward to seeing a team that's not even close to the top in the regular season win the playoffs.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:11 PM ^
If you really want to fix it you go back to the old system: Conference champs go to bowl games. Everyone else stays home. Conference champ is the one who has the best regular season conference record. *Not* the winner of one 'conference championship' game.
That would de-emphasize winning every non-con game. You want to be ready for conference games, then play good teams non-con.
Four or eight team playoff, or the current litany of Pointless Bowls and you will see more and more teams scheduling Bethune Cookman and Incarnate Word (yes, Baylor has them in 2020 and Iowa State yet this season).
October 28th, 2018 at 4:47 PM ^
Yes. 8 Conferences. 10 teams per conference. 9 conference games, 3 games OOC. No more conference championship games. Each Conf champ makes an 8 team playoff.
This really isnt that difficult
October 28th, 2018 at 5:17 PM ^
Yes, the biggest flaw in the current system is that teams in a conference should have to play every team in the conference and then decide the champion based on in-conference record/ tie-breakers, etc. I hate the unbalanced schedules, especially considering that a team like Michigan could play crossover games against Iowa, Northwestern, Wisconsin, while OSU could play Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota--a vastly easier schedule. And yet the games against the other division all count toward your division record.
With an 8-team playoff you are creating 7 post-season games that will be huge for television and creating interest in the sport. What's mysterious to me is why they won't do this because it would generate massive revenues and we all know the NCAA is whored out to big money.
October 28th, 2018 at 8:16 PM ^
No, not difficult at all.
Just dismantle every existing conference and rebuild them. Decide which 80 schools should be included. Sounds very simple and certainly worth it if it makes football playoff selection neater.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:16 PM ^
The major conferences need to condense. These imbalanced schedules within conferences are ridiculous.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:32 PM ^
Yes, thank you. Conference champs only would be the first legitimate playoff. Until then it’s an opinion national championship.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:22 PM ^
You think OSU/MSU/PSU is a gauntlet, but Bama has a cakewalk? LSU/TAMU/Auburn is just as hard and they also have Miss St and a very tough Georgia in the SEC champ game. We will almost certainly have an unranked Big Ten champ game opponent. It's not that different. You guys complain about this stuff way too much.
October 28th, 2018 at 7:54 PM ^
Wow you think that SEC stretch is just as hard? LSU has sucked the last several years and those other two teams are pretty much bums, dude.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:04 PM ^
Shoulda just left Arkansas as the first game instead of ND. I will never understand that change in schedule.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:16 PM ^
Or ND other than the 1st week of the season, and that might account for the difference in the rankings. Always need one week to adjust to the change in rosters, or in this case the change in OC/OL coordinators.
I think that the change from Drevno to Warinner is the main difference this season.
October 28th, 2018 at 2:30 PM ^
Don’t you think it will mean something with the playoff committee?
October 28th, 2018 at 2:30 PM ^
only thing that really matters from M’s perspective is, one loss, if they manage that they’ll be in the playoffs or lead to changes in how teams are selected.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:00 PM ^
Yes, cause "lead to changes" would be a satisfying boobie prize for all M fans.
October 28th, 2018 at 3:28 PM ^
It is very unlikely the committee would not choose an undefeated B1G Champ, 12-1 overall, who went 5-1 against AP Top 25 teams.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:21 PM ^
How many of thos teams are still in the top 25?
October 28th, 2018 at 4:06 PM ^
Pretty bold statement I might add.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:11 PM ^
I’m a bold mother fucker.
Weird my keyboard won’t pop up unless I choose either bold or italics. God letting me know my thoughts are game changing and revolutionary.
Hey now it’s working. My fleeting moment of knowing what it’s like to be Joseph Smith has passed
October 28th, 2018 at 4:12 PM ^
I’m a bold mother fucker.
Weird my keyboard won’t pop up unless I choose either bold or italics. God letting me know my thoughts are game changing and revolutionary.
Hey now it’s working. My fleeting moment of knowing what it’s like to be Joseph Smith has passed
October 28th, 2018 at 4:26 PM ^
I have the same issue. If I select Paragraph Format: Normal, the keyboard appears.
October 28th, 2018 at 4:19 PM ^
see what you did there.