College Football Top 25: Did Texas Deserve the Jump After Beating Iowa State?

Last Saturday, two unbeaten teams in Texas and Iowa State battled to stay that way, and Texas walked away with an easy victory 37-14.

Iowa State didn't score until the fourth quarter when the game was well out of reach, and they were clearly outmatched and outplayed by the Texas Longhorns.

The question is, though: Did beating Iowa State really jump Texas from No. 17 to No. 11 in the AP Top 25?

The answer to that is a firm no. If we look at Iowa State's schedule and why they were unbeaten, we get a completely different perspective. A couple of reasons solidify that: Iowa State hadn't really proved anything, and voters love the Longhorns based on program history.

Iowa State began the season with a strong 3-0 start, with an impressive victory over Iowa and comeback victories over UConn and FCS opponent Northern Iowa. Two of those victories were tight ones in overtime, while the other was against a UConn team that is inexperienced and, frankly, not that good.

While the victory over Iowa was impressive, it was too close and too much of an offensive shootout to really show how good Iowa State currently is. Coming into the previous week of football, they almost had enough votes to crack the Top 25. ESPN even called the Texas-Iowa State game one to watch for the week.

After a first half beat-down, people were watching any other game. Iowa State was ineffective against the talent that Texas brings to the table, but what does that show us in the college football world? Nothing really. All it proves is that Iowa State is an inexperienced team that we can look for next year to be great and have some chemistry.

The second thing we can look at is that voters typically place the same programs in high regard—whether they are proven or not. This is a Texas team that beat BYU by one point and had blowout victories against teams that will struggle to become bowl eligible.

Voters jumped them from No. 17 to No. 11 this week—and for little reason but prestige. Texas is a good team, much better than the team that went 5-7 last year, but has too many freshman and hasn't proven enough to almost crack the Top 10.

Texas will be challenged the next two weeks with two critical home games against No. 3 Oklahoma and No. 6 Oklahoma State. We will see what kind of team Texas is in the next two weeks.