It's looking like Brian's hosting service is still having some server issues, so I don't have the alphas, but here's what I scraped together this evening:
- Missouri. Wins over Illinois, Texas Tech, and Kansas. Opportunity to avenge its only loss, to Oklahoma, this week.
- West Virginia. One loss, to South Florida, and wins over, well, not much, to be honest, unless you count Cincinnati and Connecticut.
- Kansas. Okay, I know they haven't really played anybody but Missouri, and they lost to them, but compare them to the others further down the list.
- Ohio State. One loss, to Illinois, who was unranked at the time. Wins over who? Wisconsin, okay, but Michigan? Penn State? Does that make them better than Kansas?
- LSU. The best of the two-loss teams. Losses to Kentucky and Arkansas, both unranked now, but both triple overtimes. Wins over Virginia Tech, Florida, and Auburn, not to mention South Carolina and Alabama.
- USC. One loss to a ranked-Oregon, and one major upset at home to Stanford, which is worse than two triple-OT losses to unranked opponents, both of which were at least at one time ranked.
- Virginia Tech. Two losses, but both to ranked teams, one of them LSU, so they stay below them. Plus, their wins, with the exception of Clemson and Virginia, are nothing extra special.
- Arizona State. Two losses, both to ranked teams (Oregon and USC). Wins over Cal and UCLA nothing to really crow about.
- Oklahoma. This is a tough one. Both of their losses are to unranked teams, but they've given Missouri their only loss, and they beat Texas.
- Georgia. Does everybody have Georgia waaaay over-ranked, or is it the orange talking? Their two losses are to South Carolina, who fell apart toward the latter part of the season, and Tennessee, who everybody's saying isn't really all that good. Okay, so they beat Florida. It's pretty easy to read too much into that.
- Boston College. They beat the Hokies, but only barely, and they then lost to two unranked teams on successive weeks.
- Hawaii. You know, I think there's a case to be made for Hawaii being ranked as high as, say, number four. No, they haven't played anybody but Boise State, but they beat them, and they beat the rest of the unwashed opponents on their schedule, which is more than everybody from Ohio State on down can say. You can't wag your finger at somebody for "not playing anybody" when you don't beat the nobodies on your own schedule. Still, there are degrees of "nobody-ness," and all we really know about Hawaii is that they are better than Boise State.
- Boise State
- Brigham Young
- Florida
- Tennessee. Look, Tennessee's representing the East in the SEC championship game. Georgia and Florida are not. It's somewhat odd that the Vols are ranked below both the Bulldogs and the Gators, but our victory over them is negated by one more loss, and Florida's extra SEC loss came from having to play the two toughest teams from the West, and it's pretty hard to shake 59-20 from your mind. If we somehow pull off the upset over LSU, I'll have Tennessee about every other SEC team regardless of anything else.
- Illinois
- Clemson
- Wisconsin
- Texas
- Oregon
- Cincinnati
- Virginia
- Connecticut
- South Florida
So what do y'all think?