We will keep it short this week as our bracketology post goes live later today, but as we move into the back half of the season, this is our Top 25 entering CFP rankings week.
DOMINANCE REIGNS SUPREME
UCLA, LSU, Utah, Wake Forest. These four teams are a combination of zero losses with a weaker schedule or multiple losses with a stronger schedule, but one thing brings them together: winning impressively. My formula values winning big and winning on the road quite a bit. Leaving no doubt against a team sets a precedent that
a team is worth keeping an eye on. Winning on the road shows me that a team can win in the toughest of environments, boding well for success on a possible neutral field. The Bruins have benefitted from true luck of the draw in the Big Ten, avoiding Indiana, Ohio State, Iowa, and Northwestern, and they’ve won their two biggest challenges to date, winning in Eugene against Oregon in a slugfest in the rain, and then holding Wisconsin to just seven points in a two-score victory a game later. Beyond that, they’ve won all other games against much lesser opponents by an average of three scores. The Bruins will get a scrappy Michigan team and USC over their final four games.
Utah is also in this camp. Like UCLA, they’ve dominated the easy parts of their schedule, and they’ve won the two tougher games thus far on their schedule. Utah also gets BYU at home this weekend and then head to Arizona the week after, so their proving ground is coming if you still had any doubts about them.
Then there’s our two teams with losses. We’ll start with Wake Forest. The preseason 57th ranked team by SP+, they survived a scare at Purdue in week two, fell to Miami, then plucked off Louisville, sparking a five game winning streak where they’ve done nothing but bludgeon the bottom of the woeful ACC. The Louisville win holds real weight here as they went on the road and took out a surging Cardinals offense. They have three games remaining in conference play: at SMU on 11/14, at Georgia Tech the week after, and home against Duke to round out the season. Win out, and they get another crack at Miami, this time with a team who knows who they are.
LSU still might be the most talented team in the country, and after surviving the Ole Miss loss and the distractions that have come with it, they have been rolling like a sailor downwind, ripping off wins in four of their next five games. Their loss at Kentucky said a lot more about Kentucky than LSU (Will Stein is legit, they are a problem) as the Tigers have won their games against FBS opponents by an average of 30.6 points. You can either pinpoint LSU right here to track for the rest of the season or plant your flag and buy into their stock again because they get Alabama, Texas, and at Tennessee to finish the season. They will have either earned their CFP elimination or earned their way back into the top 3-5 teams.
