College Football is only two weeks into the season, and there is already a ton of chaos, and plenty of games have already derailed certain teams’ seasons. Yesterday, the AP Top 25 was released for week three, and for the first time, there was a ton of movement as there were plenty of ranked matchups and huge upsets.
Here are three of the biggest takeaways.
Preseason Rankings Still Effecting Rankings
We are three weeks into the season, and teams are still greatly boosted from a preseason ranking that likely was too high. Quite a few teams are still ranked extremely high despite either losing a game or not playing well.
Three teams stick out: Clemson, Oregon, and Notre Dame.
Clemson lost by five scores to Georgia in week one, yet they remain ranked at 22nd. Oregon started the season ranked in the top five and has had two very unimpressive wins over Idaho and Boise State. Despite this, they remain ranked in the Top 10.
Notre Dame is the crazy one. The Irish lost to NIU at home on Saturday and yet remain ranked 18th AND six spots higher than NIU, the team they lost to.
All in all, there are four teams in the AP Top 25 with a loss, nearly two dozen P4 teams that are undefeated, and quite a few G5 teams with impressive wins. But because of a preseason opinion, all these teams will still have an uphill battle for the rest of the season.
BREAKING: Week 3 College Football AP Poll🚨https://t.co/1LJ7WzV8RN pic.twitter.com/nFftgvgaGY
— On3 (@On3sports) September 8, 2024
AP Setting a Stage for College Football Super Conference?
The AP Poll seems to follow some kind of narrative of boosting SEC and Big 10 teams. This could have some to do with where teams started in the AP poll to start off the season, but nine of the top ten teams come from the Big 10 and SEC, with only Miami breaking the Top 10 at No. 10.
This may not seem like a huge deal when you consider that many of these teams will be playing each other, but consider this: Are the AP voters going to penalize the loser of a game between two top-10-ranked teams? Probably not very much.
Teams in the ACC and especially the Big 12 will have to continue to win and hope that there are either upsets or that the same teams in the SEC/Big 10 lose multiple games. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to crack the Top 10 and get an at-large spot in the CFP.
G5 Teams Finally Getting Respect…Kind of
After not appearing in the polls for the first three weeks, NIU finally made it into the rankings at the No. 25 spot. Boise State is the second team out of the rankings, while Memphis is sitting fifth out. The fact that it took this long for a G5 team to make the polls says a lot about the current state of college football, but it seems like they finally may be starting to get respect.
If all three of these G5 teams win this week, they will likely be in next week’s poll.
