The College Football Blog: 2010 Power Rankings (After Week 12)

Power Rankings after Week 12

1. Oregon 10-0 (1st)
2. Ohio State 10-1 (2nd)
3. Auburn 11-0 (3rd)
4. LSU 10-1 (4th)
5. Alabama 9-2 (5th)
6. TCU 11-0 (6th)
7. Boise State 10-0 (7th)
8. Wisconsin 10-1 (8th)
9. Arkansas 9-2 (9th)
10. Stanford 10-1 (10th)
11. Oklahoma State 10-1 (13th)
12. Nebraska 9-2 (11th)
13. South Carolina 8-3 (14th)
14. Texas A&M 8-3 (15th)
15. Michigan State 10-1 (12th)

Out: None.

Explanation: I thought it would be easy to do my rankings this week since the top 3 teams didn’t play and almost all of the teams in my top 15 won. It was easy to do 2/3 of the rankings, but the final 3rd was difficult. Again I realized that there is simply no way to do power rankings based on “the eye test” without contradicting oneself at some point.

No team fell out of my rankings this week. I kept the top 10 spots in my rankings exactly the same. However, the final 5 spots in the rankings (#11-#15) were completely different this week.

South Carolina rolled over Troy this weekend to get to 8-3. I moved the Gamecocks up a spot from 14th to 13th. While the competition wasn’t fierce, the fact that South Carolina came out motivated and on their game—it was 59-7 midway through the 3rd quarter when the OBC called off the dogs—was actually impressive. South Carolina was coming off of the biggest win of the Steve Spurrier era in Columbia (the victory at Florida that put the Gamecocks in the SEC Championship Game) and they had a showdown with their instate rivals looming ahead. This was a major trap game for them and they would have struggled in a spot like this in years past.

Michigan State took the biggest fall in my rankings this week, dropping 3 spots from 12th to 15th despite winning. The Spartans knew that there was a good chance that Ohio State would lose, as the Buckeyes were playing at Iowa. The Spartans knew that if they won and Ohio State lost they would be in the driver’s seat to win the Big Ten, as they would hold the tie-breaker over Wisconsin if they won out. They were coming off of a bye and they were playing at home. The Spartans were hosting a depleted Purdue team that had lost 4 straight by double digits. And yet, Michigan State was down 15 points early in the 4th quarter and down 11 with less than 7 minutes to go. They scored the winning touchdown with 4:32 to play when they recovered their own fumble in the end zone.

I still don’t know how good this Michigan State team is, and it’s possible that we’ll never really know due to the Big Ten’s outdated scheduling. Essentially, Michigan State has played 2 good teams. They beat Wisconsin at home and got throttled by Iowa on the road. They don’t play Ohio State. At least the Spartans will have to play at Penn State this week. If they win at Happy Valley we still won’t know if Michigan State is an elite team, but at least they will have passed another fairly significant test.

The hardest thing for me to do this week was rank the 3 Big XII teams: Oklahoma State, Nebraska, and Texas A&M. Okie State and A&M are two of the hotter teams in the country. Last Saturday, Nebraska lost 9-6 at A&M, while Oklahoma State blew out a hapless Kansas team in Lawrenceville. Last week I had Nebraska ranked 11th and A&M ranked 15th.

While we just saw the Aggies beat the Cornhuskers, and A&M has won 5 straight, I still slightly favored Nebraska on a neutral field. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, the game on Saturday was at A&M. In addition, Nebraska QB Taylor Martinez missed most of the 1st quarter and all of the 2nd quarter with injuries. Also, the referees played a huge role in this game. Nebraska was hit with 16 penalties for 145 yards, compared with just 2 penalties for 10 yards against the Aggies. Despite all of this, the score was still just 9-6 and the total yards were virtually equal.

I know that some of this is not just bad luck. Clearly the Cornhuskers have some control and discipline problems, and Martinez has been injury prone. But there were some questionable penalties that had a huge effect on the game, as the Aggies were able to convert very long 3rd downs into 1st downs late in the contest.

Because of all of these things, I ended up keeping Nebraska ranked ahead of Texas A&M, despite the fact that the Aggies just beat them. I dropped the Cornhuskers down 1 spot from 11th to 12th, and moved A&M up 1 spot from 15th to 14th.

As for Oklahoma State, the Cowboys actually made the biggest jump in the rankings this week, moving up 2 spots from 13th to 11th. This put Okie State ahead of Nebraska, which is a little awkward because Nebraska dealt the Cowboys their only loss of the season back on October 23rd, beating them by 10 points in Stillwater. This move is pretty hard to justify, but right now I just trust Oklahoma State more than the Cornhuskers.

Nebraska has a shaky situation at QB and the coach is being publically reprimanded by the chancellor for his behavior. In their meeting earlier this season, the Cornhuskers put up 51 points on the Cowboys, but my gut tells me that Oklahoma State would be the better bet on a neutral field at this point. Again, at some point, you have to go with gut when you’re ranking teams based on the “eye test.” There’s just no way around it.