College Football Rankings Week 5: Why LSU and Alabama Should Be Above Oklahoma

Weekly college football polls are based too much off the previous week's Top 25. Instead of ranking all the teams each week, most pollsters move teams down only if they lose, and up only if teams ahead of them lose.

As such, the Oklahoma Sooners remain above the LSU Tigers (in one poll) and the Alabama Crimson Tide in this week's Top 25, despite the fact that the Tigers and Crimson Tide have thus far looked like better teams than the Sooners.

Here's why Alabama and LSU should both be ahead of Oklahoma at this point in the 2011 NCAA football season.

LSU and Alabama Have Impressive Resumes

It's still September, and the LSU Tigers have already beaten three top 25 teams (outside of Tiger Stadium, too).

LSU won the marquee matchup with the Oregon Ducks, then after a game against Northwestern St. won away games against the Mississippi State Bulldogs and West Virginia Mountaineers in consecutive weeks. No team in the country can come close to matching their resume at this point.

While the Alabama Crimson Tide played Kent State and North Texas, Saban's crew has still traveled to Beaver Stadium and beaten the Penn State Nittany Lions, and recently throttled the No. 14 Arkansas Razorbacks.

The Oklahoma Sooners' Body of Work Is Lacking

The Oklahoma Sooners were supposed to win the BCS Championship elimination game against a Top-10 Florida State team in Week 4, but the Seminoles' loss to the Clemson Tigers this week mars the impressiveness of that win.

Other than the win in Tallahassee, the Sooners haven't done anything. They played the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes at home, had a bye week before the Florida State game and just beat the Missouri Tigers (also at home) by only 10 points.

So far, the LSU Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide have shown us much more on the field.

The Oklahoma Hype Is Based off Of...?

I'm not certain what the Oklahoma Sooners did in 2010 to get everyone so excited about their chances in 2011 anyway.

Last year, Oklahoma beat a Florida State Seminoles team (that was much better late in the season) early on, and then late in the year defeated the Nebraska Cornhuskers (who were promptly smacked by a 6-6 Washington Huskies team in their bowl) and the worst BCS bowl participant in the 8-5 Connecticut Huskies.

I didn't see Oklahoma do anything to warrant a No. 1 ranking coming into this season.

LSU and Alabama Both Finished 2010 with a Bang

While the Oklahoma Sooners were bullying a helpless UConn Huskies team, the LSU Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide were both notching impressive victories.

LSU coasted to a 41-24 victory over the No. 17 Texas A&M Aggies in the Cotton Bowl. The win ended the Tigers' season at 11-2, very impressive in the uber-competitive SEC West.

Alabama finished their 2010 season with perhaps the most impressive bowl victory of all, as they completely dominated the No. 9 Michigan State Spartans 49-7. Let's also not forget they had a 24-0 lead on the eventual BCS Champion Auburn Tigers in their regular season finale.

Well, They're SEC Teams

Let's face it, the SEC is just better in football. It wasn't that way a decade ago, and it might not be that way a decade from now, but it is that way now.

The suggestion that the SEC champion be automatically placed in the BCS Championship game seems more and more logical, especially considering the SEC champ has won the national championship five years in a row now.

Could the Oklahoma Sooners or Stanford Cardinal beat the Alabama Crimson Tide or LSU Tigers on a given night? Sure. But most of the time the SEC team would win, as evidenced by the fact that SEC teams are 8-2 in BCS bowls over the last five years.