Your 10/18 Top 10.

[Mikey]

1 Ohio State
2 Utah
3 Michigan State
4 Baylor
5 LSU
6 Stanford
7 Alabama
8 Clemson
9 Notre Dame
10 Florida State

Not sure Utah is all that great, but they're still unbeaten. Ohio State stays #1 just because. Stanford may be playing the best football of anybody right now, at least offensively, the defense still seems vulnerable. I hope Utah and Stanford both run the table and meet in the Pac12 CG. That would be an epic matchup.

TCU won't crack the top 10 unless an until they win out and beat Baylor in their final game. Maybe not even then.

[Atomic Punk]

There seems to be a lot more parity across the conferences. It used to be that sports writers and "coaches" would rank a lot of SEC teams highly in pre-season. When they play each other they don't fall as much due to playing artificially high ranked teams with Saragins computer SOS mixed in. Then the SEC teams get cupcakes to come to their place to pad their stats.

So now, you have Baylor running up the score every week so they don't get screwed. However, Baylor and TCU are the new outsiders like Boise State did trying to maintain rankings. Offenses have changed and there are more talented athletes to go around. I remember when Notre Dame used to recruit and keep players just so they didn't go to rivals before scholarship limits.

The SEC is still a top conference but aren't favored as much. The B1G looks very competitive this year and seems to be on an UPward trend. The PAC 12 seems to be fading overall. The SEC is still the SEC and they are always strong.

Utah? They have a RB in Booker that is very similar to LSU's. I'm not sold on Utah as they just have a few key players. However, you have to let schedules play out and let the unbeatens battle each other later in the schedule.

You can never get away with pre-season rankings so just let the schedules play out and have a fair playoff system. 8 teams would be better, but players will want to go to the NFL before they are injured in college. So this current system seems to be the best format at this time.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

1 Utah
2 Ohio State
3 LSU
4 Clemson
5 Alabama
6 Baylor
7 Michigan State
8 TCU
9 Stanford
10 Florida State

11 Iowa

[Mikey]

TCU won't crack the top 10 unless an until they win out and beat Baylor in their final game. Maybe not even then.

Well that's absurd. If TCU does that, they will be in the playoff.

If any team in a major conference goes undefeated, that team will be in the playoff.

Of course they would be in the playoff. But that doesn't mean they would be one of the 10 best teams.

[Mikey]

Mikey - I'd give Stanford #10, but Iowa definitely handled NW better than the trees did.

And yet Bama's loss to Ole Miss, who was manhandled by both Florida and Memphis ( ) was somehow "better" than Stanford's loss to Northwestern?

Not much SECBSHomerism here, is there?

[Mikey]

I've seen little of Stanford since the NW loss, but from what I've read and seen in highlights, they're looking damn good.

I assume the McCaffrey kid is Ed's son.

They've been on a roll since the disaster in the first week. Averaging about 45 points per game since then and 22 point margin. I'm still not confident week in and week out, though, just because of the Pac12 meatgrinder :wink: . They play Washington this weekend, who has the conference's best defense (~16 ppg). So we'll see.

The massive OL has been opening huge holes for the RBs (including Barry Sanders). And yes, McCaffrey is Ed's son. Also, his grandfather on his mom's side (David Sime) is a former world record holder at 100 and 220 yards and won a sliver medal at 100 m in Rome in 1960. So he has some decent genes.

[Mikey]

McCaffrey was the missing link for Stanford. They need 20 to 30 carry back who can go north/south, to complement with a couple of others that they have who are speedsters (Sanders and Bryce Love). All of this opens up the play-action game that Hogan is so good at. McCaffrey has been better than expected in terms of both resilience AND speed. Plus he's very shifty and has great instincts. He had a couple of long TD runs against UCLA but the most impressive to me was one that only went about five yards where he busted through two defenders and a blocker at about the two yard line.

Would love to see those two teams play.