Ranking college football teams before you’ve seen anything is pretty crazy, and it’s equally as crazy to rank them after only a week or 2 of data. But after 3 weeks, you’ve got an idea of what these teams are, and where they should be ranked.
Our rankings are based solely on what we’ve seen from these teams on the field through 3 weeks.
Chris and I ranked our teams, and our collaborative average will be the WCE top 10. So let’s get to it.
1. Alabama
Alabama didn’t look like world beaters against Ole Miss, but the Rebels have been the only team to beat the Tide during the regular season each of the last 2 seasons, so this was more of a mental game than most others.
Gotta admit, though, it was pretty impressive to see this team, with a true freshman quarterback, come back from being down 24-3 in the 2nd quarter and go on a 45-6 run from the 2 minute mark of the 2nd quarter through the middle of the 4th quarter before giving up 2 late touchdowns. This team has all the talent in the world and gets Kent St and Kentucky in the next 2 weeks before facing Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas A&M in consecutive games before their bye week.
2. Louisville
Bobby Petrino has this team clicking on all cylinders. Even Michael Vick is tweeting about Lamar Jackson, saying Jackson is even better than he was when he was at Virginia Tech. Talk about high praise. Good gracious.
That beatdown of Florida St was a takedown of what everyone thought was the Seminoles’ strongest unit – their defense. The Cardinals never had any kind of problem scoring on FSU, and honestly made it look easy. I don’t know that anyone in the country has a win as good as this one. This team looks downright scary, and if they can win on the road at Clemson on Oct 1st, the November Thursday night game at Houston may be a play in game for the college football playoff.
3. Ohio St.
Ohio State’s win over Oklahoma this weekend had a little of the shine taken off of it because of OU’s opening week loss to our #4 team, Houston. I guess we don’t really know how good Oklahoma actually is just yet, and whether or not this win means anything for Ohio St or Houston, but for now, Ohio St has blown out 2 Group of Five teams at home, and went on the road and handily beat the Big 12’s predicted champion.
Urban Meyer is now 19-0 on the road at Ohio St. This guy with an experienced senior QB is dangerous.
4. Houston
Like I said with Ohio St, we don’t really know what that Oklahoma win means right now. If Oklahoma had looked good in this game, we may have pushed Houston up to #3, but currently, Ohio St blasted that same team on the road in their own stadium in primetime, as opposed to beating them at 11am at home.
Houston was in a tight game, down 16-12 at Cincinnati in the 4th quarter, before Hayden Moore started throwing the ball to the wrong team. 3 interceptions led to 21 straight points for the Cougars and the game was over.
We won’t know much about this team until the matchup with Louisville on a Thursday night in November. If they can both stay undefeated until then… well, talk about must see TV.
5. Stanford
For the 3rd time in a calendar year, Stanford dominated USC. This year’s 27-10 score wasn’t that close, but at least USC put up a fight, unlike week 1 against Alabama. Stanford won’t blow out a lot of teams, but they’ll physically dominate a lot of them. With Notre Dame’s struggles through the first few weeks, and Oregon’s issues with stopping the run against Nebraska, the Cardinal schedule doesn’t look as difficult to navigate this year as it once did.
6. Michigan St
Mark Dantonio with 2 weeks to prepare is almost unbeatable. They looked great against the Irish last night, racing out to a 36-7 lead in the 3rd quarter before Notre Dame made a run at them in the 4th quarter, finishing up with a 36-28 final. Michigan State still has a lot to prove, starting this week against Wisconsin, but right now, the only big thing on their resume is a win over a Notre Dame team who lost to the same Texas team that lost to Cal last night. But they looked damn good yesterday.
Question: Who in the world is in charge of Big 10 television scheduling? You have a potential top 10 or top 15 matchup between Wisconsin and Michigan St this week, and it gets relegated to the Big 10 Network at 11am, while ABC has taken Michigan and Penn St for the 2:30pm national window. Talk about a total lack of respect.
7. Texas A&M
Texas A&M went into Auburn and flattened one of the tires on the Gus Bus Saturday night. The defense looked good (but that hasn’t been difficult the last 2 seasons on the Plains) and Trevor Knight looks like he has an offensive coordinator that is letting him be himself, rather than asking him to do things that he’s not capable of doing. If they can find a way to beat Arkansas this weekend, they should handle South Carolina the week after, before hosting Tennessee in what may be a battle of top 10 teams by that point.
8. Clemson
Clemson hasn’t really shown anything too impressive so far this season, but they’re 3-0, and they just blew out South Carolina St 59-0 yesterday. Their win over Auburn wasn’t even as impressive as Texas A&M’s, but they did get a road win in a hostile environment on opening weekend, and found a way to squeak out a game that was going the wrong way against Troy last weekend. Watson looks like he’s getting better each week, and the defense is solid. Their first real test is this Thursday night, on the road at Georgia Tech, which is their last game before hosting Louisville on Oct 1st.
9. Arkansas
Week 1 didn’t look so good for the Razorbacks, as they needed a 4th quarter drive to come back and beat Louisiana Tech at home, 21-20. That win looks a little better as LaTech has scored 53 and 45 points the last 2 weeks. Basically, the Hogs are ranked in the top 10 because of their win on the road at TCU last weekend, and because they took care of business 42-3 against Texas St this weekend. Holding this team to 3 points is impressive because Tex St scored 56 in their first game of the year in a win over Ohio.
This weekend will tell us a lot about Texas A&M and Arkansas after their battle in AT&T Stadium.
10. Wisconsin
Wisconsin still has one of the most impressive wins of the season, even if most people claim it was more a result of LSU’s futility than of Wisconsin’s doing. We’ll find out everything we need to know about this team this weekend in East Lansing when they play Michigan St.
