BCS Rankings Week 13: Who Is Too High, Who Is Too Low?
The BCS rankings for Week 13 of the college football season have just come out, and we're going to get right to work breaking them down and trying to get at the essential truth of things over the next several hours.
As always in our weekly musings, the first thing on our minds is which teams are ranked too high and which are too low.
Despite Saturday's relatively light slate, this promises to be a more difficult task than usual. The middle and bottom of the Top 25 are totally different from last week's.
But is everyone where they should be? Alas, that's never the case in the BCS.
Here are five teams that are too high and five that are too low.
Too High: No. 25 Mississippi State
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The Bulldogs peaked at No. 19 in the BCS rankings in Week 11 after their 24-17 win over Kentucky extended their win streak to six in a row.
In the last two weeks, however, they've been put in their place with losses to SEC West foes Alabama and Arkansas. And while the Bulldogs deserve credit for taking the Razorbacks to the very limit, the fact of the matter is that they are lucky still to be in the BCS rankings at all right now.
Exactly who would make a better No. 25 team is hard to determine, but one intriguing possibility would be Northern Illinois out of the Mid-American Conference. The Huskies have won eight games in a row and have scored an average of 43 points in that span. They are sitting just outside the Top 25 in both the AP Poll and the USA Today poll.
Just throwing it out there. After all, it's always good to see new blood in these dastardly rankings.
Too High: No. 21 Arizona
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The Wildcats were idle this week, and their weekend off allowed them to capitalize on the losses by Iowa and Mississippi State, who were No. 20 and No. 21 in the Week 12 rankings, respectively.
While it makes sense that Mike Stoops' team would be given the nod in the rankings with the two teams immediately in front of them going down, I for one just have a problem seeing a 7-3 team that has lost two in a row sitting on top of Florida State and NC State, who are both 8-3 and winners of two in a row.
Besides which, Arizona's last game was a loss at home to USC, who just got beat by Oregon State, who beat the then-No. 9 Wildcats in Tucson.
Add it all up and you get a team that, shall we say, just is not very good.
Too High: No. 14 Missouri
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Missouri has won each of their last two games after enduring a brief two-game losing streak on the road at Nebraska and Texas Tech.
A nice bounce back, to be sure, and the fact that Missouri's 14-0 win over Iowa State bumped them up a spot to No. 14 should not be too much of an outrage.
But the Tigers just did not play well on Saturday against the Cyclones. Blaine Gabbert had yet another sub-par outing, and the Tigers were actually outgained by the Cyclones, 332-306. The fact that they had to resort to a fake punt to beat a 5-7 team just is not a very good sign.
But my biggest beef is that they are now ahead of a Nebraska team that demolished them head-to-head and is still atop them in the Big 12 North.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Too High: No. 10 Michigan State
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The Spartans were less than 15 minutes away from their second loss in their last three games on Saturday. But their late rally, which was aided by two Boilermaker turnovers, instead boosted them two spots in the rankings, from No. 12 to No. 10.
Let's be honest here. Michigan State is a very good team, but they are not a Top 10 team. Especially not since their only loss was a blowout against an Iowa team that has looked painfully mediocre over the last two weeks.
In short, there are at least two teams that are more deserving of a spot in the Top 10 than they are, whose identities will be revealed shortly.
Too High: No. 5 LSU
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The Tigers just barely escaped yet another close call on Saturday, just barely edging out a 43-36 victory over a 4-7 Ole Miss team on the strength of a Stevan Tidley touchdown run with less than a minute to play.
For their tomfoolery, Les Miles' boys were dropped from No. 5 to No. 6 in the AP Poll, and their gap over No. 6 Stanford in terms of BCS average was trimmed significantly.
Yet there they remain at No. 5.
Now, anybody who has been following my BCS coverage in prior weeks knows that I've been calling for LSU's head ever since they slithered their way to the No. 5 spot. As far as the one-loss club is concerned, they just hardly seem like the most dominant team of the bunch.
And for the first time in weeks, I actually feel like it's going to be hard to argue that LSU is truly deserving of their No. 5 spot.
Too Low: No. 19 Nevada
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Let's switch gears and talk positively about a couple of teams, shall we?
It seems like the pack of wolves out in Reno is always on my list of teams that are too low, and here they are again this week.
But there's a new wrinkle in these rankings, as Nevada actually dropped a spot from No. 18 to No. 19 even after their 52-6 win over New Mexico State. Instead, they are one of two teams that had to take a step back in order to make room for Texas A&M.
In short, if being the lowest ranked one-loss team in the country wasn't enough of an insult, being dropped down yet another peg must seem like an outrage.
But I'll tell you who is even more ticked off about this than anyone: Boise State.
No. 16 Virginia Tech
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With their win over then-No. 24 Miami on Saturday, the Hokies won both their ninth game in a row and the ACC Coastal Title.
Their reward in the BCS rankings: nothing.
Instead, their No. 16 spot was a cutoff line of sorts, as the three teams immediately ahead of them in last week's rankings were able to capitalize on Nebraska's loss by moving up one spot.
This happened despite the fact that the Hokies are No. 13 and No. 14 in the AP an USA Today polls and saw their BCS average get hiked from .368 to . 421.
Too Low: No. 11 Alabama
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Remember when I hinted that there was at least one team that is more deserving of the No. 10 spot than Michigan State?
Well, here you go: It's the defending champs.
While I'm not about to sit here and try to make the case that their blowout win over Georgia State should be some kind of springboard, I do think that they are probably the only two-loss team that could go toe-to-toe with anybody in the country. They have the third-best scoring defense in the nation and are scoring over 35 points a game.
Besides which, the writers were in agreement with me last week when they had the Tide at No. 10, and they have them at No. 9 this week.
What is it that they say about great minds again?
Too Low: No. 9 Oklahoma State
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The previous two weeks, the Cowboys were on my list of teams that were too high.
Well, after watching them effectively seize Big 12 supremacy with Nebraska's loss and their 48-14 win over Kansas, I believe it's high time I changed my tune.
Not only is Oklahoma State totally deserving of their No. 9 spot, I for one am actually convinced that they even deserve to be ahead of No. 8 Ohio State.
The problem, I suppose, is one of losses. Oklahoma State's 51-41 loss to Nebraska looked very impressive for a couple of weeks. Not so much now, especially since Ohio State's only loss was to a No. 7 Wisconsin team that is on a roll unlike any other.
As such, I have no choice but to admit that I'm going out on a limb by championing Oklahoma State over Ohio State.
But if the Pokes beat Oklahoma in the Bedlam game on Saturday, I reserve the right to say, "I told you so."
By the way, I for one think it's an absolute travesty that Brandon Weeden's name hasn't come up in Heisman talks. Ditto Justin Blackmon. In fact, Kendall Hunter is also doing work with the third-most rushing yards in the country.
Too Low: No. 6 Stanford
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The Cardinal's win over my beloved Cal Bears in the Big Game on Saturday probably should have given them a bigger boost than it did.
Instead, the general consensus appears to be that the Bears were just that bad. Not only does that cheapen Stanford's win, it also makes Oregon look bad.
And because Oregon looks bad, the fact that Stanford's only loss all season was to the Ducks isn't nearly as redeeming as it was in prior weeks.
This is, in my opinion, as simple an explanation as you're likely to find as to why the Cardinal are not sitting atop the one-loss mountain right now.
But I don't agree with it. Neither should you.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
