College Football's 11 Best 11s For Halloween Week: Texas Is No. 1

Each weekend another contender rises to claim the BCS throne currently occupied by the Florida Gators.

From the start of the season it has seemed to this writer the most reasonable challenger is Texas.

In view of the Longhorns' impressive 41-7 dismantling of Missouri there seems no reason to continue the facade of any other team occupying the top position.

On Saturday afternoon, Alabama was particularly unimpressive in barely escaping from lowly Tennessee and Florida continued their post-Tebow concussion woes with a 29-19 victory over hapless Mississippi State.

Alabama, playing at home, could not even score a touchdown against a Tennessee squad with a losing record who previously surrendered 26 points to Auburn.

The Gators win over the maroon Bulldogs from Starkville is hardly more impressive. Mississippi State's most notable victim this season is Vanderbilt.

Outside of Texas, who appears to be the most powerful outfit? A case could be made for Paul Johnson's merciless Legion of Doom operating out of Atlanta.

No unit in the nation appears to be improving so much from week to week as the Rambling Wreck. No team in the country seems to crush the life out of the opposition from week to week as do the Engineers.

The latest recipient of Ga Tech's wrath? The supposedly red-hot Cavaliers of Virginia who had outscored their past three opponents by a combined total of 83-12.

Playing on the road in Charlottesville, where the Yellow Jackets had not won since their National Championship season of 1990, Tech controlled the ball for 43 minutes to 17 for the Wahoos, outrushed the Cavaliers 362-30, and destroyed Virginia 34-9.

With this in mind, we now present the 11 Best 11s for the week of Halloween.

                                    The 11 Best 11s

Ranking This Week                                 Ranking Last Week

1. Texas                                         3.

2. Florida                                        2.

3. Alabama                                      1.

4. Ga. Tech                                     8.

5. Boise State                                  6.

6. Iowa                                          4.

7. Cincinnati                                    7.

8. Southern California                        5.

9. LSU                                            9.

10. Texas Christian                           N/R (No.1 On The Porch)

11. Oregon                                      11.

On The Porch: Pittsburgh, Penn State, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Virginia Tech    

TCU, with a fine road win over Brigham Young, leaps back into the 11 Best 11s to replace Miami. The Horned Frogs appear headed for a BCS Bowl.

The Huricanes made the mistake of underestimating the stunning ability of Clemson running back C.J. Spiller, who has been compared favorably to former Pitt Panther Tony Dorsett, the 1976 Heisman Trophy winner. 

The Tiger sensation rewarded the overconfident Miami defense with the greatest one man performance in the history of Clemson University and a shocking home defeat.

The final tally for Spiller? Three hundred and ten total yards through rushing, receiving, and kick returns.

Southern California, "amped all week" as one outlet reported, had promised to achieve revenge against the Beavers of Mike Riley for their lone loss of 2008.

The result was a 42-36 victory for the Men of Troy that created more questions about the Trojans than it answered.      

As for Big 10 leader Iowa, what more can be added to the fact the Hawkeyes defeated a .500 Michigan State team on the final play of the game? A Spartan team who had lost earlier this season to Central Michigan.

While Cincinnati, LSU, and Boise State all won impressively against schools who had played in BCS Bowls in the past five years, it was the Oregon Ducks who stood out among the remainder of this week's ranked teams.

On the road in Seattle, the Ducks dismantled a highly competitive Washington team by the score of 43-19. Oregon appears to be the best team on the West Coast at this point of the season.

And so it goes.