NCAA Football Rankings 2016: Hits and Misses from Week 8 Polls
A pair of top-10 battles produced very different results on Saturday, with one going to overtime while the other was a blowout early on. Those kind of clashes often have a major impact on how the Associated Press and Amway polls look the day after, as was the case this time.
The AP poll is voted on by media members, while the Amway version is the product of ballots cast by FBS coaches. Every voter has their own way of putting together their ranking, and when combined together the results give us something else to dissect from Week 7 of the college football season.
Did the voters get it right, or were there some places where they could have done better? We've broken down the two polls to point out the notable details.
Hit: Wisconsin Remains in Top 10
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Is there really a debate over which multi-loss team is the best in the country? The voters don't think so, as Wisconsin hardly saw a dip in the polls after its overtime loss to Ohio State.
Despite being on a two-game losing streak, the Badgers dropped only two spots in the Associated Press poll to 10th. That's the same spot they hold in the Amway rankings, though that's where they were entering the weekend.
Wisconsin's losses have come by seven points apiece to unbeaten Big Ten foes OSU and Michigan—teams that have won their other 10 games by a combined 445 points.
The other previously top-10 team that's riding a two-game losing streak, Tennessee, wasn't as fortunate. The Volunteers' 49-10 home loss to Alabama caused them to drop nine spots to 18th in the AP poll and 11 spots to No. 19 in the Amway.
Miss: Ohio State Loses First-Place Votes
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Maybe the impressive way that Alabama is beating teams this season is impacting how voters grade other unbeaten schools' performance. This would make sense with Clemson, which slipped from third to fourth in the Associated Press poll after needing overtime to beat North Carolina State at home, but why punish Ohio State for a hard-fought OT victory on the road?
As we chronicled in the previous slide, Wisconsin is no slouch. Yet the Buckeyes' 30-23 win over the Badgers caused them to lose four total first-place votes, going from four to two in the Amway coaches poll and two to zero in the AP rankings.
If anything, OSU's ability to rally from a dismal first half and force OT and then come out on top in a hostile atmosphere should be rewarded. Instead, some voters decided that made the Buckeyes no longer worthy of being first on their ballots and turned their support toward Alabama.
Hit: West Virginia On the Rise
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West Virginia started a long ways away from the Top 25 when the 2016 season began, earning one vote in the preseason Associated Press poll and no attention at all from Amway voters. But following their impressive 48-17 win at Texas Tech on Saturday, the Mountaineers are among the biggest movers in both polls.
The Mountaineers rose from 20th to 12th in the AP poll and from from 18th to 13th in the Amway rankings, leapfrogging quite a few ranked teams that won, including fellow unbeaten Boise State.
West Virginia is ranked higher now than at any point since October 2012, when a similar 5-0 start lifted it to No. 5 in the AP poll before losing its next five.
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Miss: A .500 Team Is Ranked in Both Polls
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The better nonconference games we're getting at the beginning of the season have made having multi-loss teams in the rankings a reality we have to accept. Most of these teams are justified since their losses have come to other ranked foes, but at some point a line needs to be drawn.
For instance: is it really a good look having a team with a 3-3 record in the Top 25?
Yes, these polls are essentially meaningless and have no bearing on how the playoff rankings will look like when they come out next month. They're nothing more than something to spark debate, and having Ole Miss in the rankings after losing 34-30 at Arkansas is a topic that's deserving of plenty of discussion.
Our take: the Rebels have played one of the toughest schedules in the country, their losses coming to ranked schools Alabama, Arkansas and Florida State, so it's not like they've lost to schlubs. But they did fall to a pair of teams who also have two losses—blowing leads to each—yet the voters still consider them worthy of a spot in the polls.
Ole Miss slipped 11 spots to 23rd in the Associated Press poll and 13 spots to 22nd in the Amway poll.
Hit: Group of Five Schools Earning Their Due
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Outside of non-power darling Houston, no other school from beyond the five major conferences appeared in either preseason poll back in August. Now there are four in each ranking.
Houston, Boise State, Western Michigan and Navy give the "Group of Five" conferences 16 percent representation in the polls with each team on the rise: Houston moved up to 11th in both polls after holding off Tulsa 38-31, Boise State sits at 14th in each poll after its 28-23 win against Colorado State, Western Michigan rose to 20th in each poll after a 41-0 win at Akron and Navy jumped a spot to 24th in the Associated Press rankings and entered the Amway poll at No. 25 despite its Thursday game at East Carolina being postponed.
Those four schools are the most likely candidates for the New Year's Six bowl slot that is given to the highest-rated non-power conference champion. If things ended now that would be Boise, since Houston trails Navy in the American Athletic Conference's West Division standings.
Miss: AP Voters Not Ready to Acknowledge Sun Belt
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Appalachian State took Tennessee to overtime in Week 1, earning plenty of praise for its performance and getting many experts to think the Mountaineers could beat Miami (Florida) a few weeks later. That didn't happen, and with that loss seems to have gone any consideration of the Sun Belt Conference by Associated Press voters.
While upstart Troy got 10 votes in the Amway poll—disclaimer: five Sun Belt coaches are among the 64 voters—it didn't appear on any AP ballot. The Trojans are 5-1, surpassing last year's win total and have won four in a row since pushing Clemson to the limit in a 30-24 Week 2 road loss.
Nine of the 11 current Sun Belt teams have received AP votes in the past, but only two (Louisiana-Lafayette and New Mexico State) have ever appeared in the Top 25—but that was back in 1943 and 1960, respectively.
All recruiting information courtesy of Scout.com, unless otherwise noted. All statistics provided by CFBStats, unless otherwise noted.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
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