In golf, they refer to Saturday as “moving day” because players want to “move” themselves into contention. This past Saturday was more like “moving out” day for several teams who found themselves on the wrong end of the first major upsets of the season.
Look no further than my back yard, where Missouri came to town and virtually ended all talks about a national championship for Georgia. Meanwhile Oklahoma found themselves knocked from the ranks of the unbeaten in most intolerable fashion, by their Texas rivals who had looked all but dead & buried. And then Stanford apparently decided to just have one of those games that separates pretenders from contenders, Utah capitalized on it. At least Michigan fans already pretty much knew they were living on borrowed time so their overtime loss to Penn State might sting a little less.
With all those teams falling sharply, you might think there’d be some big gainers for the week as well but in reality only Missouri stood to gain an awful lot with the win. Sure, LSU gets a little extra lift in the polls from the teams falling past them and Texas Tech ends up with a bigger jump than their performance would have warranted but I’m not sure anyone believes their stay in the mid-teens of the poll will last very long.
The shake up could have been even bigger, if only Ole Miss hadn’t let one slip away against Texas A&M, if Clemson hadn’t decided to avoid being Clemsoned yet again or perhaps if several of the top 10 teams hadn’t have had the weekend off.
I’d go into some lengthy discussion of my favorite also ran here but, well, how many ways can I say that Paul Johnson can’t recruit a lick and that the cupboard is awfully bare down on North Avenue. At this point, Georgia Tech losing to a team that has any connection to the state of Utah really isn’t even news.
So now, with a reshuffled deck and a few new cards, it’s time for this week’s Top 25.
1. Alabama (1)
2. Oregon (2)
3. Ohio State (3)
4. FSU (5)
5. Clemson (6)
6. Louisville (7)
7. LSU (11)
8. Texas A&M (9)
9. Miami (11)
10. South Carolina (14)
11. UCLA (16)
12. Stanford (4)
13. Baylor (15)
14. Texas Tech (20)
15. Missouri (Un)
16. Georgia (8)
17. Oklahoma (10)
18. Oklahoma State (21)
19. Fresno State (22)
20. Northern Illinois (23)
21. Nebraska (24)
22. Washington (19)
23. Florida (18)
24. Virginia Tech (25)
25. Wisconsin (Un)
Dropped Out This Week: Michigan (12), Northwestern (17)
Jon's Three Cents 