Who's Number One?

Most years in college football there are at least a couple very established teams who seem very likely to compete for a championship. However so far this year there has been not one team that has truly looked like the top overall team. The current number one team is Ohio State, and they have not played at all like it. They got a semi-impressive win at Virginia Tech but since then VT has lost to East Carolina (a decent non-power 5 team, but not exactly good) and let a very bad Purdue team hang around for a whole half. Then Ohio State goes and only beats Northern Illinois team by a touchdown and their all-star duo at quarterback have combined for 6 interceptions through 4 games. Ohio State has an unfair abundance of talent and some of the best coaches and facilities in all of college football. But they appear to have a championship hangover, which isn't surprising, it happens to a lot of past championship teams. If they want to get into the college football playoff they need to figure something out, and find some motivation.

The other Big Ten team in the playoff window, Michigan State, also seems to be underachieving. Their one premier win on the season was a 3 point home win against a then top 10 Oregon team. Last week Oregon was obliterated 62-20 at home by Utah, who I will talk about later. So now the significance and impressiveness of Michigan State's win is questionable. They also haven't been extremely impressive in their other games. Ole Miss has seemed very impressive this year and they might be the most qualified, but they whooped up two poor teams putting up 73 and 76 points in the two games. Then the Rebels traveled to Alabama and won 43-37, however Alabama had 5 turnovers. At a certain point you begin to wonder if those due to stifling defense, or just sloppy offense. Either way, Ole Miss still probably owns the best win of the season, or do they?

The Utah Utes have in my opinion one of the best cases to be number one up there with Ole Miss. Utah beat now #22 Michigan at home by one touchdown, but the last touchdown came with under a minute left. Then proceeded to play adequately against two lesser teams, and then obliterated Oregon on their field. Utah came out of halftime and proceeded to embarrass Oregon on a national stage 62-20. Now for one last underachiever, TCU (Texas Christian University), the Horned Frogs beat Minnesota, who seems to be way less impressive than we thought at the beginning of the year, 23-17 on the road, decent win. In week 3 they let a horrible SMU team score 37 points on them, but I shouldn't be surprised TCU barely plays defense. However last week was definitely the most concerning, TCU survived at Texas Tech 55-52 (No that's not a basketball score) on this play, and absolutely stole a victory Texas Tech. TCU has an elite offense, but in my opinion there is only so long a team can survive if they are constantly in shootouts.