College Football Rankings: 3 Winners That Don't Deserve Top 25 Consideration

Winning an early season college football game isn't always good enough.

In the NFL, any win is good. You don't need to impress any voters. That's not the case in the NCAA.

These are all teams that won in Week 4, but just weren't that impressive. At some point, they may deserve Top 25 consideration, but they didn't do enough with wins this week.

Notre Dame

Before you call me a Notre Dame basher, let me say that one of the greatest moments in my life as a sports fan came in 2006 when I got to see a game at Notre Dame Stadium.

Right now, they are just not a Top 25 worthy team.

They make too many mistakes, especially when considering that this is largely the same team that finished the year in incredibly strong fashion last year.

Today, Pittsburgh showed anyone paying attention that if you can keep Michael Floyd in check, the Fighting Irish offense is very beatable.

Notre Dame's next big test will come against USC. If they beat Purdue and Air Force, they should still not be considered Top 25 worthy unless they beat the Trojans.

Illinois

I have to admit to being wrong about Illinois last week. I didn't think they would beat Arizona State, but I was wrong.

So how did they repay me? Well, they came out and had a very tough game against Western Michigan.

It's not that Western Michigan is a bad team, but a Top 25 team at home should come out and beat them with no problem.

That didn't happen today. Illinois needed a fourth quarter field goal to beat Western Michigan. They are a team on the rise, but calling them a Top 25 team is going a bit overboard.

Michigan State

Michigan State was ranked before last week, when Notre Dame handily beat them. Now, if you read what I said about Notre Dame, you are probably guessing that I don't think that highly of a team that loses convincingly to them.

The Spartans came back with a 45-7 win over Central Michigan today.

Their more important game is next week against another questionable team in Ohio State. Michigan State doesn't deserve Top 25 consideration unless they beat the Buckeyes.