I think everyone agrees that with Alabama’s win over Mississippi State that they should move up to number 1 and my rankings agree.   I’ve got Oregon up 4 spots to number 2 after their  win over Utah.

Ole Miss stays at number 3 even with two losses, and Mississippi State drops three spots to number 4.  I’m sure many people, likely including the college football playoff committee, will dismiss Ole Miss as a top 5 team with their two losses, but I think this is just another example of being too focused on raw wins and losses.  Don’t forget, they did beat Alabama. (And I’m not the only one who has Ole Miss ranked in the top 5.)  Rounding out my top 5 is TCU after surviving at Kansas.  The rest of my top ten includes UCLA, Georgia, Baylor, Auburn, and Florida State.

Speaking of Florida State, here is a simple test you can do to see if a voter in one of these college football polls knows what they are doing.  Anyone who votes for Florida State number 1 over Alabama is completely clueless.  Alabama is 9-1 and 7-1 against teams in the top 30 (according to Sagarin).  That means they have played 8 of their 10 (!!!) games against top 30 teams for the second toughest schedule in college football behind only Auburn.  That’s a gauntlet.  And they’ve made it through it nearly perfect.  Alternatively, Florida State is 3-0 against top 30 teams, which is good enough for the 51st toughest schedule.  Those 3 top 30 wins?  Notre Dame, Louisville, and Clemson.  Notre Dame just lost at home to Northwestern, Clemson just lost to Georgia Teach, and Louisville has an unexplainable loss to Virginia on their resume.  This means that all three of these “big” FSU wins came against teams that now all have 3 losses.  Not as impressive in retrospect.

If this FSU team finishes undefeated, they will obviously get into the college football playoff.  But I think we might have a Notre Dame-2012 type situation on our hands where some SEC team is going to absolutely annihilate them.   The only question is if Florida State can produce a weirder story than the Manti Teo-Catfish episode.  Hopefully they are at least up for that challenge.

Cheers.

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