Tag: Alabama Football

Predicting the College Football Playoff Top 10

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After another great weekend of College Football, we sit trying to predicted what the College Football Playoff Committee will do.  We’ve now seen the movement with the polls but if there is one thing that the committee has proven, it’s that they are independent.  They have been looking at the “body of work” and eye test of these teams and carrying less weight on where the teams were ranked in the preseason.The tough part comes when we get to the grouping of Oregon, Arizona State, TCU, Baylor, Ohio State. A case could be made after the wins that Arizona State, TCU, and Ohio State posted this last weekend that all could be moved ahead of Oregon. It would be an accurate reflection of how each week these teams should be re-ranked based on what happens across the board in college football. Based on common opponents, Arizona State has had more impressive wins and dominated Notre Dame but they have a loss, where Florida State doesn’t. The question is, “Is a bad loss to a top team better then a win vs a bad team”, that’s where this committee could make a difference. If we took strength of schedule for 1 loss teams vs Florida State’s schedule, we could move them to 9th! Which is crazy to think about but it’s the truth and right now, they don’t look as good as the teams in that top 8. What appears to matter most in the rankings every week is who you beat, with that, TCU and Arizona State should move ahead of Alabama.

Now, I want to say, in no way do I think that these teams are better then Alabama but for this week they should be ranked higher. If Alabama beats Mississippi State, they will move two the #2 team next week. So for week 12 of the college football season, this is what we think the top 10 should be:

1.  Mississippi State

2.  Florida State

3.  TCU

4.  Oregon

5.  Arizona State

6.  Alabama

7.  Ohio State

8.  Baylor

9.  Auburn

10.  Ole Miss

Top 25 College Football Rankings

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After a week of complete upheaval in College Football, we return to normalcy or something like it.  We can’t call it normal in College Football when the State of Mississippi is running the house.  As always, we don’t look at the rankings from the week below, this is based on where the teams are now, meaning, who cares if a team like University of Arizona was ranked 10th and loses.  We’re not ranking them 17th just because.  So here is are Week 8 rankings:

1.  Mississippi State

2.  Florida State

3.  Ole Miss

4.  Baylor

5.  Oregon

6.  Notre Dame

7.  TCU

8.  Auburn

9.   Oklahoma

10.  Alabama

11.  Georgia

12.  Michigan State

13.  Ohio State

14.  Nebraska

15.  Oklahoma State

16.  Kansas State

17.  Stanford

18.  Arizona State

19. Arizona

20. East Carolina

21.  Marshall

22.  USC

23.  Kentucky

24.  Utah

25.  Washington

Just outside: Virginia, Minnesota, LSU, Texas A&M, Iowa, Rutgers, Oregon State,

Rivals Rundown College Football Top 25 – Week 8

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Wisconsin v Ohio StateAfter taking a week off and enjoying some music at Austin City Limits, we here at the Rundown have pieced ourselves back together and are ready to get back to some College Football!  The Top 6 teams have stayed almost untouched for the first six weeks of the season.  Now that both Alabama and Oregon have faced true tests in Texas A&M and Washington and passed, that leaves Louisville as the only untested top 6 team.  We will give Louisville some props for avoiding the trap game against Rutgers and while Rutgers is a good team, they are nowhere near A&M or Washington.  Other notes…  We are still of the opinion that LSU has the best shot of making it to a National Championship game other then Oregon or Alabama at this time, even though we have them ranked at 7.  With the showdown between Florida State and Clemson looming, the loser will fall somewhere between LSU and Miami, thus giving everyone a dilemma, does the winner deserve to be 1,2 or 3…  That is going to be a huge choice, I think at this time it depends on who the winner is and how they looked.  But, it will be tough!  It’s too bad Stanford choked on Utah,  it hurts the overall street cred of the Pac12 and Washington.  Until that we would say that the Winner of Stanford vs Oregon would peg their ticket if they were undefeated and so was Clemson or Florida State but now the Ducks are going to have to be really impressive, not to mention games left against Stanford and Oregon State. (Oregon State is a whole different blog).  Even as we sit back and look at our rankings, UCLA and Baylor might be the most underrated teams and we’re not sold on Texas Tech and Auburn but the deserve the rankings for now.  Ok, no more rambling, here is our most recent installment of the Rivals Rundown Top 25 Teams, Week 8 Edition!

1 Alabama Crimson Tide
2 Oregon Ducks
3 Clemson Tigers
4 Ohio State Buckeyes
5 Louisville Cardinals
6 Florida State Seminoles
7 LSU Tigers
8 Texas A&M Aggies
9 Baylor Bears
10 UCLA Bruins
11 Miami Hurricans
12 South Carolina Gamecocks
13 Stanford Cardinal
14 Missouri Tigers
15 Virginia Tech Hokies
16 Georgia Bulldogs
17 Washington Huskies
18 Fresno State Bulldogs
19 Texas Tech Red Raiders
20 Northern Ill Huskies
21 Michigan Wolverines
22 Nebraska Huskers
23 Michigan State Spartans
24 Auburn Tigers
25 Oklahoma Sooners

(Stats via Espn.com; Picture via sbnation.com)

College Football Top 25 Week 6

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Oregon Ducks Football vs Cal Bears 2013

Welcome everyone to our week 6 Rivals Rundown Top 25 rankings!  As you’ll see below we’ll really rank the Top 30 with those that are on the radar here at the Rundown.  Normally, here we write this big rant about what happened the previous weekend in College Football, so… Here is our Rivals Rundown Rant!  First Oklahoma State, what happened to our Top 10 team!?!  Not to mention one of our preseason favorites in the Big 12!  Urgh, the sad part is that game had upset written all over it, coaching buddies, an underperforming West Virginia team that no one was talking about, and an Oklahoma State team that clearly was looking past their early Saturday opponent.  The pay the ultimate price, dropping from the Top 10 out of the Top 25!!!  They will have to fight their way back, there are too many teams, too many teams playing good football for us to give them respect after that loss.  Next, South Carolina and UCF, neither team really moved and UCF had their chances but as we often see in upset games, the team that has been tested already in the season finds a way to close (See Fresno State).  Moving to our favorite game of the weekend, Arizona State and USC.  Now, this was a good game until Arizona State realized that they could out play USC on both sides of the ball, took the energy from the home crowd and stomped on a team that over the last 10 years had crushed Arizona States dreams over rising to the top of the PAC.  We will mention, that USC acted way too early to fire Lane, the program doesn’t want to realize or admit that the NCAA sanctions are affecting them.  We welcome back the Sun Devils and the Hokies to the Top 25, why?  They both proved that they are Top 25 teams, the Sun Devils for Offense and the Hokies for Defense.  The only new team to the Top 25 is the Maryland Terrapins.  The Game of the week last weekend was Georgia and LSU, both of which moved a little but we still see each of these teams as outside bet for the National Title.  Maryland will get their big test this week to see if they belong or if they are pretenders.  Other teams to keep your eye on, Iowa, East Carolina and Northern Illinois, we’re still not sure how the stack up next to the rest of our Top teams.  So here is our Rivals Rundown Top 25 for Week 6 of the College Football Season!  Enjoy, Share and Comment.

 

       
Current Rank Previous Week Team  
1 1 Alabama Crimson Tide, 4-0
2 2 Oregon Ducks, 4-0
3 3 Clemson Tigers 4-0
4 4 Ohio State Buckeyes 5-0
5 5 Louisville Cardinals 4-0
6 9 Georgia Bulldogs 3-1
7 10 Stanford Cardinal 4-0
8 6 Florida State Seminoles 4-0
9 8 LSU Tigers 4-1
10 13 Texas A&M Aggies 4-1
11 15 Baylor Bears 3-0
12 13 UCLA Bruins 3-0
13 14 Miami Hurricanes 4-0
14 17 Oklahoma Sooners 4-0
15 16 Washington Huskies 4-0
16 21 Ole Miss Rebels 3-1
17 18 Fresno State Bulldogs 4-0
18 19 Florida Gators 3-1
19 20 South Carolina 3-1
20 21 Northwestern 4-0
21 Unranked Arizona State Sun Devils 3-1
22 23 Michigan Wolverines 4-0
23 29 Maryland Terrapins 4-0
24 22 Wisconsin Badgers 2-2
25 Unranked Virginia Tech Hockies 4-1
Next 5-      
26 26 Texas Tech Red Raiders 4-0
27 Unranked UCF Knights 3-1
28 28 Boise State Broncos 3-2
29 29 Northern Ill Huskies 4-0
30 27 Nebraska Cornhuskers 3-1
       
Just Outside      
  7 Oklahoma State Cowboys 3-1
  Unranked Iowa Hawkeyes 4-1
  Unranked East Carolina 3-1
  Unranked Missouri Tigers 4-0
  26 Michigan State Spartans 3-1
  Unranked Notre Dame 3-2

 

Our Week 5 Top 25 Update!!!

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NCAA Football: Arizona State at Stanford

Here is our Top 25 Ranking for Week 5 of the College Football Season.  Week four was a lackluster week of games in college football, which would leave one to believe we’d have little movement in our Top 25 Rankings… it’s kinda true.  So our top teams went unchanged but after watching some of the performances by our next 15 we had to do a little housecleaning to make sure that everyone is where they belong.  We saw Michigan continue to drop after what was a dominating performance against Notre Dame two weeks ago, while they have won both games since, neither wins have impressed us enough for them to maintain and if it wasn’t for the Notre Dame game, they would be with Maryland and Texas Tech as questionable unbeatens.  Speaking of Maryland, if you have followed our blog or rankings, you’ll know that we called this and that we have started the unofficial campaign for CJ Brown’s Heisman candidacy.  Other notables, was our Sun Devils getting thumped by what looked like an NFL team in Stanford.  The silver lining was that the Devils fought till the end and came within a 4th down of having a chance to pull within 11 points with 4 minutes still left.  Either way, they drop out of the top 25, again because of the performance.  A top 25 team should be competitive within the rankings, sans Alabama and Oregon (maybe Stanford, we’ll see).  Side note, keep you eye on UCF, the Knights might still be one of the better teams that no one is talking about.  Also Washington and Baylor could both be considered outside contenders in their respective conferences to win!  While we’re sharing random thoughts, how about Utah, they beat their instate Rivals Utah St and BYU to Own the State but a slip vs Oregon St who lost to Eastern Washington, keeps them off of the National Radar and ours.  We’ll Utah, let’s see what you can do against the Pac12 South!  Big game this week that we are personally stoked about and might get some play, Maryland and Florida State.  Check back this week as we will have our Rivals Rundown Rewind and games to look forward to this weekend.  Enjoy your NFL Sunday Funday!  Update: We missed Texas Tech as the 25th ranked team when we originally published, so we had a couple of moves made to 25-30 and out…

 RIVALS RUNDOWN TOP 25 WEEK 5

Current Rank Previous Week Team
1 1 Alabama Crimson Tide, 3-0
2 2 Oregon Ducks, 3-0
3 3 Clemson Tigers 3-0
4 4 Ohio State Buckeyes 4-0
5 5 Louisville Cardinals 4-0
6 6 Florida State Seminoles 3-0
7 7 Oklahoma State Cowboys 3-0
8 8 LSU Tigers 4-0
9 9 Georgia Bulldogs 2-1
10 13 Texas A&M Aggies 3-1
11 11 Stanford Cardinal 3-0
12 15 Baylor Bears 3-0
13 13 UCLA Bruins 3-0
14 14 Miami Hurricanes 3-0
15 17 Oklahoma Sooners 3-0
16 16 Washington Huskies 3-0
17 21 Ole Miss Rebels 3-0
18 18 Fresno State Bulldogs 3-0
19 19 Florida Gators 2-1
20 20 South Carolina 2-1
21 25 Northwestern 4-0
22 24 Wisconsin Badgers 3-1
23 12 Michigan Wolverines 4-0
24 Unranked Notre Dame 3-1
25 30 Texas Tech Red Raiders 4-0
Next 5-
26 28 Boise State Broncos 2-2
27 Unranked UCF Knights 3-0
28 26 Michigan State Spartans 3-1
29 Unranked Maryland Terrapins 4-0
30 27 Nebraska Cornhuskers 3-1
Out-
23 Arizona State Sun Devils 2-1
29 Northern Ill Huskies 3-0

(stats via espn.com; photo sbnation.com)