Fanatics View Top 10 College Football Rankings (Week 8)
- Alabama
What all can be said. Alabama is still the formidable power house year in and year out. Like in many years passed we’re not sure anyone can beat them. Perhaps Tennessee can give them a fight today or Texas A&M might have the best chance next week.
- Michigan
Michigan is straight embarrassing Big 10 programs at what seems to be on a weekly basis. Although they haven’t faced tons of ranked opponents, considering last year and their current dominance, we can only put one team ahead of them right now. Jim Harbaugh seems destined to bring a National Championship to Ann Arbor sooner rather than later.
- Clemson
Clemson continues to pick up from last year’s dominance. DeShaun Watson has probably been the best quarterback in the country along with Louisville’s Lamar Jackson. However, we don’t see them moving up in our rankings much, they only have one ranked team left on their schedule in Florida State, and the Tigers have definitely had an easy schedule this year.
- Texas A&M
Texas A&M has taken down 3 quality ranked opponents in UCLA (at the time), Arkansas, Tennessee, not to mention SEC’s South Carolina. This isn’t the Aggies of the past few years as Kevin Sumlin has noted, in fact their strength may actually be in their defense, led by projected overall Top 5 pick Myles Garrett.
- Louisville
Not only did Louisville absolutely embarrass Florida State but Louisville also went toe to toe with Clemson and have perhaps the leading Heisman trophy candidate in Lamar Jackson. We refuse to penalize them in the rankings based off of barely losing to Clemson. Louisville has a real shot at a Top 4 finish into the College Football Playoff.
- Ohio State
Although still a potentially dominant force in college football, Ohio State has faced literally no one this season. They lost a ton of talent to the NFL Draft and it remains to be seen on whether they can beat or contend with the top teams in college football. Don’t crown them yet.
- Washington
The Huskies have quietly and now not so quietly been dominating teams this year but let’s pump the brakes a little bit. Oregon & Stanford are not what they’ve been in past years, not even close. The Huskies do have interesting matchups coming up with Utah, California & USC so we will see how for real this team is soon enough.
- Wisconsin
The Badgers defensively have been very stout this year and very impressive, the most points they have allowed is 17 to Georgia State. They were in a highly competitive game with Michigan that went down to the wire and destroyed Michigan State (although MSU is in a down year). They take on Ohio State today and it will be a great test to see where the Badgers can get to.
- Tennessee
The Vols have had an interesting year to say the least, almost losing to Appalachian State, coming back from a massive deficit to beat Florida, beating Georgia on the road and almost coming back to beat Texas A&M last week. Their only loss comes to Texas A&M, despite getting down in almost all of their games; the Vols have shown mental toughness against formidable SEC opponents. Even with a loss to Alabama this week, it will be hard to take them out of the Top 10 with the schedule they have. After a likely loss to Alabama, the Vols should win the rest of their games.
- Nebraska
The Cornhuskers are 5-0 on the year and look to make it 6-0 today on the road in Indiana. We’re not sure how far this Huskers offense will take them and we do have strength of schedule concerns with them but Oregon, @ Northwestern, & Illinois are decent wins. With that said this appearance is short termed as they are very likely to fall out of our Top 10 ranks with games @ Wisconsin and @ Ohio State coming up.
By: Taylor Jones
