NCAA Football Rankings 2016: Predicting the Top 25 After Week 8

Week 8 of the 2016 college football season was, to put it lightly, top-heavy. There were only three games matching Associated Press Top 25 teams, and all three were in the SEC West, with No. 1 Alabama facing No. 6 Texas A&M, No. 17 Arkansas visiting No. 21 Auburn and No. 23 Ole Miss battling with No. 25 LSU. 

A former College Football Playoff contender continued its surprising fall down the standings, but it was a quiet day otherwise—until James Franklin and Penn State exacted a seismic shock on the Top Five with a stunning special teams play. 

Beyond that, with the first College Football Playoff rankings looming soon, it was a matter of piling up style points and positioning for the season’s stretch run. How did the week unfold? Read on for how this week’s projected Associated Press Top 25 will shake out and some key winners and losers that emerged:

Rank	Team	Previous	Record	Week 8 Result
1.	Alabama	1	8-0	Won 33-14 vs. Arkansas
2.	Michigan	3	7-0	Won 41-8 vs. Illinois
3.	Clemson	3	7-0	Open Date
4.	Washington	5	7-0	Won 41-17 vs. Ohio State
5.	Louisville	7	6-1	Won 54-13 vs. N.C. State
6.	Nebraska	8	7-0	Won 27-14 vs. Purdue
7.	Baylor	9	6-0	Open Date
8.	Ohio State	2	6-1	Lost 24-21 vs. Penn State
9.	Wisconsin	10	5-2	Won 17-9 vs. Iowa
10.	West Virginia	12	6-0	Won 34-10 vs. TCU
11.	Texas A&M	6	6-1	Lost 34-10 vs. Alabama
12.	Florida State	13	5-2	Open Date
13.	Boise State	14	7-0	Won 28-27 vs. BYU
14.	Florida	15	5-1	Open Date
15.	Oklahoma	16	5-2	Won 66-59 vs. Texas Tech
16.	Tennessee	18	5-2	Open Date
17.	Auburn	21	5-2	Won 56-3 vs. Arkansas
18.	Houston	11	6-2	Lost 31-14 vs. SMU
19.	Utah	19	7-1	Won 52-45 vs. UCLA
20.	Western Michigan	20	8-0	Won 45-31 vs. Eastern Michigan
21.	North Carolina	22	6-2	Won 35-14 vs. Virginia
22	LSU	25	5-2	Won 38-21 vs. Ole Miss
23.	Navy	24	5-1	Won 42-28 vs. Memphis
24.	Penn State	NR	5-2	Won 24-21 vs. Ohio State
25	Colorado	NR	6-2	Won 10-5 vs. Stanford

Moving Up

Auburn

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Gus Malzahn started 2016 under pressure at Auburn, and beginning the season 1-2 with losses to Clemson and Texas A&M certainly didn’t make his seat any cooler. A funny thing happened on the way to looking for a new coach on the Plains, however. The Tigers turned into the second-best team in the SEC West.

Auburn found stability with Sean White under center and has shown significant improvement over the last month. No. 17 Arkansas was the latest to find that out Saturday in Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Tigers jumped all over the Razorbacks early and never let up en route to a 56-3 victory, setting a league record for rushing yards vs. an SEC foe with 543. 

Auburn’s Eli Stove got the fun started quickly with a 78-yard end-around touchdown on the Tigers’ first offensive play from scrimmage, and two more backs added scoring runs for a 21-point first-quarter lead. Kamryn Pettway led the way with 192 yards on 27 carries.  Alabama is the clear class of the SEC West, but with the ground game rolling again, Auburn is an obvious No. 2 that will add some intrigue for Nov. 26’s Iron Bowl.

Louisville

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Conventional wisdom has five teams (Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, Clemson and Washington) in prime position for the College Football Playoff, but Louisville and Lamar Jackson are right behind them. The Cardinals’ only defeat was a narrow 42-36 loss at Clemson which saw them stopped inside the Clemson 10 with under a minute to play, and if Bobby Petrino’s bunch can run the table the rest of the way, they’ll stay in the playoff picture.

Saturday was an impressive display of why we can’t count the Cardinals out. N.C. State came into the ‘Ville with momentum after taking Clemson to overtime before falling 24-17, but Louisville completely dismantled Dave Doeren’s group en route to a 54-13 victory. Jackson kept his hold on the Heisman Trophy lead, completing 20 of 34 passes for 355 yards with three touchdowns and adding 76 rushing yards and a touchdown on the ground.  Texas A&M’s loss at Alabama will allow the Cards to rise in this week’s polls, too.

Colorado

Mike MacIntyre entered 2016 needing to show progress at Colorado. MacIntyre was 10-27 in four seasons with the Buffaloes, and while Colorado fans are patient, another losing season wouldn’t have been taken lightly.

Well, the Buffs have made progress and then some. Saturday’s 10-5 win over sliding Stanford improved Colorado to 6-2 and clinched the program’s first postseason bid since the 2007 Independence Bowl. Colorado won with defense, limiting Christian McCaffrey to 92 yards on 21 carries and holding the Cardinal (4-3, 2-3) out of the end zone.

The Buffs’ only losses have come to Michigan and Southern California, and they’re a legit threat to win the Pac-12 South. Now that is a turnaround story that will vault MacIntyre’s crew back into the Top 25.

West Virginia

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Through four weeks, there were myriad reasons to throw cold water on West Virginia’s unbeaten start. The Mountaineers hadn’t played a tough schedule, with their best wins narrow victories over BYU and Kansas State. But over the last two weeks, Dana Holgorsen’s group has shown it could be a force to be reckoned with in the Big 12 race.

An impressive 48-17 rout of Texas Tech burnished WVU’s credentials, and a 34-10 whipping of TCU validated them even further. Quarterback Skyler Howard threw for 231 yards and four touchdowns, and the Mountaineer defense made Kenny Hill’s life very difficult, limiting him to 148 yards passing with a touchdown and an interception.

West Virginia is 6-0 and knocking on the door of the Top 10. Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Baylor still remain, but it’s time to take the Mountaineers seriously.

Moving Down

Ohio State

The only thing we know about college football is that we don’t know anything. That was proved again Saturday night in State College, Pennsylvania. The college-gridiron world had pointed toward Nov. 26 and a potential meeting of unbeatens between Michigan and Ohio State to decide the Big Ten East title and much more, including a spot in the College Football Playoff.

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Penn State and James Franklin had other ideas, pulling off a shocking 24-21 upset sealed by Grant Haley’s 60-yard return of a blocked field goal for the go-ahead score with 4:27 to play. The Buckeyes took a 21-7 lead into the fourth quarter, but the Nittany Lions outscored them 17-0 in sloppy conditions in Happy Valley.

Suddenly a young roster fronted by J.T. Barrett (who threw for 245 yards and a touchdown) looked young and mortal, rather than immortal. As we’ve learned, a loss won’t eliminate the Buckeyes from the playoff picture, but it certainly doesn’t make their path any easier. It was, by far, the biggest win of James Franklin’s career.

Texas A&M

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Texas A&M has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the 2016 season thus far. Led by Oklahoma graduate-transfer quarterback Trevor Knight, the Aggies have mixed efficient offense with a nasty defensive line and entered Saturday’s showdown at No. 1 Alabama undefeated and ranked No. 6 nationally.

Kevin Sumlin began the year on the hot seat, but has clearly moved back into safe position. He has experience winning in Tuscaloosa; the signature win of his A&M debut season was a Johnny Manziel-led upset at Bryant-Denny Stadium. But there was no Manziel magic on hand Saturday. The Aggies rallied from an early 13-0 deficit to take a 14-13 lead, but the Tide finished them off with defense and Jalen Hurts’ big plays. The first bowl came on Jonathan Allen’s 30-yard fumble return for a touchdown with 21 seconds left in the third quarter.

Freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts made the Aggie defense look silly with a 37-yard scramble and touchdown run for a 33-14 lead with 12:27 to go, and that was all she wrote. The Aggies are improved from 2015, but like many teams, they still aren’t on Alabama’s level in the SEC West or nationally.

Arkansas

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Unless you’re Nick Saban, finding sustained success in the SEC West is very difficult. The division is college football’s deepest; six of the seven West teams began this week in the Top 25 (what’s your problem, Mississippi State?). That makes life on a weekly basis extremely difficult.

Arkansas and Bret Bielema found that out Saturday afternoon at Auburn. The Razorbacks entered as the nation’s No. 17 team following a stirring win over Ole Miss, but were 1-2 in league play with losses to Alabama and Texas A&M. After running into the buzzsaw known as the Auburn run game, they’re now 1-3. The Razorbacks allowed three first-quarter rushing touchdowns to Auburn and never recovered in an ugly 56-3 defeat, allowing 543 rushing yards—the worst single-game total in program history.

Quarterback Austin Allen was briefly knocked out of the game with a leg injury and struggled, completing 17 of 30 passes for 187 yards and an interception. Arkansas managed only 26 rushing yards. Bielema has made progress in his Arkansas tenure, but more work lies ahead to become an elite West threat.

Houston

What happened to Houston? Three weeks ago, Tom Herman’s Cougars were in the thick of the College Football Playoff chase. Now, they’re out of that race and the race for the American Athletic Conference West Division.

A 46-40 loss to Navy ended the Group of Five’s playoff hopes and kept Houston from controlling its AAC destiny. After surviving Tulsa 38-31, those hopes took another gigantic hit Saturday vs. SMU. The Cougars couldn’t solve another uptempo offense and, more importantly, looked positively mediocre against a defense that entered allowing 32.7 points per game, No. 97 nationally. The Mustangs outgained them by over 100 yards. 

SMU built a 28-7 halftime lead and hung on for an 38-16 win. That’s a huge comedown for a team that hoped to be the first Group of Five program to make the College Football Playoff and will now be consigned to a late-December bowl at best.