The Ohio State Buckeyes used a 34-10 win over Michigan State to jump past Oklahoma and LSU and into a third-ranking in our national rankings for Week 7. After wins over Michigan State, Nebraska, and Cincinnati, OSU has compiled positive trends in our system at a rate commensurate with teams that make the College Football Playoffs.
Alabama continues its season-long run atop the rankings while Clemson remains second.
Missouri’s impressive performance against Troy and Iowa State’s win over TCU returned both of those teams to the rankings.
In the PAC-12 . . .
Oregon proved you can bore fans two weeks in a row yet still expand the lead in your division and even rise to 12th in national rankings. Duck offensive trends on Savvy are surprisingly weak and that usually means there is an upset loss coming sometime in the near future. While the Ducks can defend with anyone, lack of a competitive ground game will be their undoing.
The Ducks’ closest challenger in the North is Washington. The Huskies somehow managed to lose to Stanford and that dropped them to 20th in our top 25 but UW is projected as a good bet to topple Oregon on October 19th in Seattle.
Utah is ranked 17th and continues to lead the PAC-12 South rankings. However, USC is currently just a shade out of the rankings and is projected by our system to win the South. The Trojans defeated the Utes 30-23 two weeks ago.
We had our worst week of predicting games since 2016 as we finished 31-17 in choosing winners for Week 6. If there is any good news in a week like that, it might be that the system was better than Vegas odds in determining game points. The Index is now 310-77 (81%) for the season.
To see our full rankings and other feature stories, click here.
The Top 25
1. Alabama 5-0
2. Clemson 5-0
3. Ohio St. 6-0
4. Georgia 5-0
5. LSU 5-0
6. Oklahoma 5-0
7. Penn St. 5-0
8. Notre Dame 4-1
9. Texas 4-1
10. Florida 6-0
11. Wisconsin 5-0
12. Oregon 4-1
13. Michigan 4-1
14. Iowa 4-1
15. Auburn 5-1
16. Boise St. 5-0
17. Utah 4-1
18. Wake Forest 5-0
19. Minnesota 5-0
20. Washington 4-2
21. Missouri 4-1
22. Michigan St. 4-2
23. Appalachian St. 4-0
24. N Carolina St. 3-2
25. Iowa St. 3-2
