Next week’s slate of college football games could shake up the top 10 of the US LBM Coaches and AP Top 25 polls.
Several monumental games will feature ranked teams including Penn State at USC, Ohio State at Oregon and the Red River Rivalry of Texas-Oklahoma. Even Ole Miss-LSU could catapult the winner into the top echelon. So there’s the potential of up to five top-10 teams needing to be reevaluated.
The Commodores, who entered Saturday as 0-60 against top-five teams in the AP Top 25 Poll, knocked off Alabama (2 Coaches/1 AP) 40-35 in Nashville.
The Gophers had lost seven straight games to Power Four competition, but their 24-17 win over USC (15/11) kept the Trojans winless in two road games to the Midwest. (Just wait until it actually gets cold in the heart of the Big Ten.)
And, wouldn’t you know it, just before midnight, Arkansas happened, too.
The two-loss Razorbacks provided a third field being stormed by fans with a 19-14 upset of Tennessee (4/4).
That’s a sizable shakeup from three unranked and three unheralded teams that have had forgettable outings in losses to Georgia State (Vandy), North Carolina (Minnesota) and Oklahoma State (Arkansas).
We’ll see what the new polls look like when the US LBM Coaches and AP polls are tallied and released Sunday.
Teams that should rise
Oregon will benefit from Bama and Tennessee losing, and the Ducks’ methodical 31-10 win over Michigan State should be rewarded. There was no lookahead approach to next week’s showdown against the Buckeyes.
The Spartans didn’t score until the fourth quarter, when Oregon let up and let backups get the reps.
Texas A&M has been quietly getting better each week under coach Mike Elko. After the Aggies (21/T25) destroyed Missouri (9/9) 41-10 for their fifth straight win, they should get a sizable bump up the charts.
Teams that should drop — significantly
It was utterly ridiculous that Michigan (10/10) was ranked so high to begin with, because anyone who has watched the Wolverines play knows they set passing offense back 40 years.
Michigan resorted to using its third quarterback of the season, benching Alex Orji in favor of Jack Tuttle in an attempt to ignite the passing game. It worked, a little, as Tuttle at least helped them eclipse 100 yards passing for the first time since Orji was named the starter in Week 4 against USC.
They had 113 yards passing against Washington, which wasn’t nearly enough to prevent a 27-17 loss to the Huskies.
Fraudulent might not be the best way to describe Missouri, but overrated certainly is. The Tigers‘ best win may actually be Vanderbilt after what transpired Saturday. But the way they lost to the Aggies, they deserve to only be on the edge of the polls along with Michigan.
Teams that gotta go
Looking at you, Louisville. The Cardinals (22/22) dropped their second straight game, 34-27 to SMU, with a similar formula of trailing early and will fade out accordingly.
The bad part for U of L isn’t believing, despite the losses, that it was the better team against Notre Dame and SMU. It’s in knowing only two currently ranked teams (Miami, Clemson) are remaining on the schedule, so it may prove difficult for the Cards to get back into the club.
UNLV (23/T25), we hardly knew ya. The Rebels botched an opportunity in a nationally televised game Friday night to make a big impression with the viewing audience that doesn’t usually get around to seeing them play.
It was a highly entertaining game, but Syracuse emerged with a 44-41 overtime win.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: College football rankings analysis for updated Coaches Poll, AP Top 25
