Irish Breakdown College Football Top 25 - Week 9
Week eight of the college football season was a wild affair as a pair of Top 10 teams went down and others won on last second plays. There was quite a shakeup in the latest IB Top 25 rankings.
Here's the latest rankings as we head into week nine of the college football season.
DROPPED OUT: #23 Iowa Hawkeyes (lost 12-10 vs Minnesota), #24 Tennessee Volunteers (Lost 34-20 vs #12 Alabama)
There was some movement at the top of my rankings, with Ohio State jumping in front of Washington to take over the No. 2 spot. Ohio State having a second Top 15 win, and with Ohio State controlling the game throughout, was a key factor in the decision. Washington struggling to beat a 1-6 Arizona State team was the final factor.
Michigan not being higher is something I get asked about, but if anything you could argue Florida State deserves to be ahead of Michigan more than Michigan deserves to be higher. Georgia, Ohio State, Washington, Florida State and Oklahoma all have wins over Top 25 teams, and all but Georgia have a win over a Top 15 team.
Michigan's best wins are over Rutgers (6-2) and UNLV (6-1).
Michigan and Washington also have a common opponent, Michigan State.
Michigan beat MSU 49-0 and scored a touchdown from 6-yards out with just eight seconds left in the game. Michigan led 28-0 at halftime, led 35-0 at the end of the third quarter and out-gained MSU 477-182 (295-yard difference).
Washington beat MSU 41-7 and decided to take a knee at the MSU 10-yard line with 30 seconds left instead of running up the score like Michigan did. Washington led 35-0 at halftime and 41-0 at the end of the third quarter. It out-gained MSU 713-261 (452-yard difference).
Michigan will jump up when they actually prove themselves against a good team.
That was my argument against Penn State as well. The Nittany Lions were undefeated but hadn't beaten anyone yet. They finally played a good team in Ohio State and they got out-played from start to finish, and this was against an OSU team that was missing Emeka Egbuka, TreVeyone Henderson and Denzel Burke.
Florida State jumped Oklahoma after earning a second Top 25 win combined with Oklahoma struggling to beat a 3-4 UCF team that was coming off a 51-22 loss to Kansas.
North Carolina also saw a massive drop after their stunning home loss to Virginia, who was 1-5 coming into the game.
Kansas State jumped back in after blowing out TCU by a 41-3 score.
Kentucky jumped in despite having a bye week and the fact they've lost two straight. Simply put, it was hard to find 25 teams with resumes that scream "We should be ranked." The final straw for me was Kentucky's two losses were to Top 15 teams and the fact Kentucky had the best win of the teams under consideration, having blown out Florida.
*** NOTE: The Irish Breakdown rankings are redone every week, and each week the overall resume is examined. This is done to attempt to avoid recency bias and overreactions to the most recent week.
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2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Offense
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