The beautiful thing about college football is that on any given Saturday fireworks can happen and a top team can get knocked off the top of the mountain. You can never take a week for granted, and must bring your A game every week or risk having to spend the rest of the year battling to get back to the top spot.
This weekend we witnessed two top teams get brought down by underdogs (one I predicted the other not so much) and now there is shuffling that needs to be done in the final four as we head into the next week.
With conference play getting going, things are really about to heat up.
Final Four
- Ohio State
After two convincing wins to open up the season, the Buckeyes looked sluggish this weekend against as they took down Northern Illinois 20-13. Any coach will tell you that a win is a win, but Saturday wasn’t the best of days for Buckeye quarterbacks Cardale Jones and JT Barrett. We will chalk this up as an off day and see how they respond next week.
- TCU
The Frogs put on another show on offense, but defensively they are struggling mightily with several players out and that doesn’t bode well going forward as they head to Lubbock next week to take on Texas Tech. Gary Patterson’s defense gave up 37 to SMU this past week and Texas Tech quarterback Pat Mahomes has to be licking his chops as they come off a big win against Arkansas.
- Ole Miss
Everyone welcome the Rebels to the Final Four. The Rebels are fresh off of an upset over Alabama in Tuscaloosa and they put up several crooked numbers despite letting the Crimson Tide back into the game late. I was waiting to see how the Rebels responded against stiff competition and it doesn’t get much stiffer than Alabama on their own home turf. This team is legit, and now they must survive their tough SEC schedule. Can they survive now that they are the hunted rather than the hunters?
- Michigan State
This spot is going to be a revolving door of teams by the end of the year, but for now the Spartans are in. They haven’t been overly impressive outside of them hanging on to their victory over Oregon, but outside of that it has been meh. Eventually either they or Ohio State won’t be on this list, so change is inevitable at some point.
Just Missed The Cut:
- Baylor
The Bears were off this week, so they remain unmoved at this point. Anxious to see how some of their showdowns with the Big 12 opponents shake out.
- Notre Dame
I talked about TCU hitting some adversity with players out, but I don’t think anyone is more snake bitten than the Fighting Irish. They have suffered several season ending injuries all over the roster and lost another one over the weekend. Despite all of that, the Irish knocked off Georgia Tech this weekend and that is pretty impressive all things considered.
- UCLA
Three weeks down, three wins under the belt of the freshmen quarterback sensation Josh Rosen. The Bruins knocked off BYU over the weekend, and continue to look good early on. With USC falling to Stanford over the weekend, they are sitting pretty in the Pac 12 South.
- LSU
This is a team I wasn’t expecting to be discussing much this year, but here we are. The Tigers and Leonard Fournette ran all over (literally) Auburn over this weekend and continue to pound their opponents into submission. Fournette may be the early front runner for the Heisman, but if the Tigers develop more of an attack through the air on offense they are going to contend for the SEC title this year.