The College Football Blog: 2012 Power Rankings (After Week 3)

Power Rankings After Week 3

1. Alabama 3-0 (1^st)

2. LSU 3-0 (2^nd)

3. Oregon 3-0 (5^th)

4. Oklahoma 2-0 (6^th)

5. Texas 3-0 (7^th)

6. Florida State 3-0 (8^th)

7. Georgia 3-0 (9^th)

8. Stanford 3-0 (NR)

9. USC 2-1 (3^rd)

10. South Carolina 3-0 (13^th)

11. Florida 3-0 (NR)

12. West Virginia 2-0 (10^th)

13. Notre Dame 3-0 (NR)

14. UCLA 3-0 (NR)

15. Arizona 3-0 (NR)

Out: Ohio State (4^th); Clemson (11^th); Michigan State (12^th); Kansas State (14^th); Mississippi State (15^th).

Comments: It was a challenge to come up with the power rankings this week, perhaps the most challenging since I’ve been doing this. The end result was almost certainly my most unusual top 15 ever. 

Alabama remained my #1 team for a third straight week and the Tide appear to be head-and-shoulders above the rest of college football (or at least discernibly better). 

The story of the year so far from an overall perspective has to be the rise of the Pac-12 and the decline of the Big Ten. I was slow to catch on to both developments. I haven’t gone back and looked but I’m fairly certain that this week’s rankings contain two firsts: no Big Ten teams and a total of 5 Pac-12 teams. 

I switched out 5 teams this week. Florida returns to the top 15 at #11, while Stanford, Notre Dame, UCLA, and Arizona all debut in the rankings for the first time this season. Stanford obviously made the biggest splash, jumping into the rankings at #8 after yet another upset of USC. 

Speaking of USC (or should I say Southern Cal after that performance last week), I had a really hard time determining where to place them in the rankings. I still think they are one of the most talented teams in the country, but so far they have not been very impressive. They’ve sustained injuries and that’s clearly a factor. 

As you know, I usually give teams a lot of leeway with injuries as long as they aren’t season ending. In other words, I like to do my power rankings with the assumption that all teams are 100% healthy (barring season ending injuries of course). 

For example, a few years ago when Oklahoma lost Sam Bradford I was very slow to move Oklahoma down the ranks because he was expected to come back at some point and I felt they were a dramatically better team with him than they were without him. Eventually he was knocked out for the year and the Sooners disappeared from my rankings just as they had from almost everyone else’s weeks earlier. 

USC’s injuries have certainly been costly. Last week’s game may well have been totally different if they were playing with their starting center. However, USC returned with one of the deeper lines in the country, so they should not have suffered a total collapse at the position even if they took a few injuries. The performance by their OL last week was pathetic. 

To get to the real point here, I can’t look at the loss of a kicker and a center the way I might look at the loss of Matt Barkley. Thus, I was harsher on USC than I have been to some high ranked teams in the past who suffered key injuries. I still think they have the potential to be a great team, but so far they haven’t looked like a great team on the field. In the end I decided to move USC down 6 spots in the rankings from #3 to #9, 1 spot behind Stanford. 

6 teams moved up in my rankings this week, with all 6 moving up more than 1 spot and South Carolina taking the biggest climb, going up 3 spots from #13 to #10. Only 2 teams dropped while staying in the power rankings this week. The Trojans took the biggest fall of any team remaining in the top 15. 

While the Big Ten/Pac-12 issue and the USC situation were certainly part of what made this week’s edition of the power rankings so strange, the most unusual aspect concerned the number of teams moving down or out of the rankings despite coming off of wins. Of the 5 teams that fell out of my rankings this week, only Michigan State did so after a loss. Ohio State, Clemson, Kansas State, and Mississippi State all won last week but ended up out of my top 15 this week. West Virginia also dropped 2 spots from #10 to #12 despite winning last weekend. 

There were a few reasons for this development. For one there is the “change in the landscape” issue concerning the Pac-12 and Big Ten which I’ve already gone over. But the main factor was that the teams who fell out simply haven’t been all that impressive against weak competition, while the teams jumping into the rankings to replace them have been more impressive on the field so far this season. 

At times over the years when I felt like I had a really good idea of who the top teams in the country were I’ve been slow to react to the week-to-week developments on the field, especially early on. This year, however, I came into the season not feeling great about which teams I thought were really the best outside of the top 3. Thus, I’ve been quicker to change my feelings based on the on-field results than I usually have been in the past. 

Without question the most unique aspect of this week’s rankings was the fate of Ohio State. They won last week to move to 3-0 on the year but they plummeted out of my rankings from 4^th. I have rarely had a team in the top 4 fall all the way out of the rankings. I’m 99.9% sure I’ve never dropped a top-4 team out of my rankings after a loss. 

With the Buckeyes it was really a combination of things, many of which have already been mentioned. For Ohio State specifically, I was not at all impressed by their performance against Cal. Cal had not looked good in 2 games going into this one and they had to fly halfway across the country to play a noon-start at the Horseshoe, yet Ohio State was actually fortunate to come away with a 7-point victory. 

I had several reasons for liking Ohio State going into this season. They had experience; they had Urban Meyer; and I was sure they would have a stout defense. There were also some intangibles at play. They were coming off a very disappointing season and I thought they’d be hungry for a return to success. I thought they’d be rejuvenated under Meyer and much improved overall as a team due to his presence. I also thought they’d be particularly fired up to prove themselves during the regular season—even against weaker opponents—since they would be barred from postseason play. 

Thus far, not much of that has played out on the field. They don’t appear to be totally locked in against weaker competition. In my opinion, the offense does not yet look like an Urban Meyer offense. Most importantly, the defense has been a disappointment. Due to all of these things and other outside factors, I just couldn’t find a spot for the Buckeyes in my top 15 this week.