Monday, November 21, 2005

College Football Rankings: November 20th

They're up a day late this week, but not much has changed, except for Miami's drop on the heels of an upset at the hands of Georgia Tech. If you missed last week's rankings, you can see them here.

Top 25
1. USC
2. Texas
3. Penn State
4. LSU
5. Virginia Tech
6. Notre Dame
7. The Ohio State University
8. Auburn
9. West Virginia
10. Oregon
11. UCLA
12. Miami-FL
13. Alabama
14. Fresno State
15. Georgia
16. TCU
17. Texas Tech
18. Florida
19. Louisville
20. Georgia Tech
21. South Florida
22. Clemson
23. Florida State
24. Boston College
25. South Carolina

• I don't have much else to add with the rankings, so I'll just touch on the Heisman Race. Reggie Bush should win the trophy, having put in the kind of exceptional performance (513 total yards) that voters will remember. Last week, I said that Bush might be the most talented player on the team, but Leinart was the MVP. Now, I'm not so sure. As valuable as Leinart has been, Bush has come up with two huge performances in the Trojans' closest contests (ND and Fresno). He's been just as valuable, if not more. Without him, there's a good chance that SC isn't just a 1-2 (or more) loss team, but their winning streak would have ended with a wimper against the Irish or the Bulldogs. So my ballot right now would go Bush, then Leinart, then Vince Young, though I could end up switching the two QBs depending on how they play in their rivalry games this weekend.

• Some predictions for rivalry weekend: USC beats UCLA in a shootout (49-38), Texas rolls over A&M (+30 point win), Colorado beats Nebraska and their bastard offense, G-Tech comes back to earth and loses to Georgia, Florida beats FSU.

• In a development that speaks towards a potential increase in parity in the college landscape, most of the major conferences will not meet their bowl quotas, meaning more teams from C-USA, the WAC, and other mid-major conferences should be able to qualify. Of course, another part of this problem is that the major conferences have a pretty high expectation for the number of bowl eligible teams they'll produce (for example, the 12 team SEC has 8 bowl tie ins), so this shouldn't be too surprising. And there are just too many bowl games period, but that's a whole other column.

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