Resume over Reputation College Football Power Rankings (Sept. 27): SEC school takes top honor, ACC has unusual names near the top and the Big 12 is nowhere to be seen

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Sep 27, 2020

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Since college football is pretty much back in earnest after this weekend’s 30-plus college football games (with more than 15 of those of the Power 5 head-to-head variety), I figure it’s time to roll out another feature that I’ll be doing this fall in this space — my college football power rankings. But there’s around just any power rankings. They are specifically noted as “Resume over Reputation” Power Rankings. In other words, many polls are determined by which teams are supposed to be good, or are traditionally good. If you’re ranked high early in the season, you’re likely to stay that way even if you struggle in victories. That won’t be the case with this feature. I’m attempting to do these solely by resume. If you’ve had big wins on the field, you will be rewarded. If you haven’t, you’re going to be watching from the sidelines until you change that. This will start off as a free feature for this week and potentially next, but it will shift to a premium offering one things get rolling in October.

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Ok, no more sales job. Here are my national power rankings. My only criteria is you have to have played in one game to qualify to be ranked. These will be paired with Big Ten power rankings once Big Ten play begins next month.

Do I think these are the 10 best teams in America right now? No. But I'm doing this as an exercise to amplify the importance of resumes and not voting for schools strictly due to name brand. As the season goes on, I expect this to look a little more "normal," but I still think it will be somewhat significantly different than the AP, coaches (and maybe even CFP) polls and should be interesting to follow.

1. Mississippi State (1-0)

A one game resume isn't much, but the Bulldogs have the most impressive win of the season (sorry, Kansas State — you're dinged a bit for that home loss to Arkansas State). If you beat the defending national champions on the road to open the season, you deserve to be the No. 1 in power rankings that week — even if that defending national champion looked a lot different than it did a year ago. The KJ Costello/Mike Leach pairing is going to be fascinating to watch, and I feel good about Mississippi State’s potential to remain dangerous after seeing how well Costello gelled with some of Mississippi State’s weapons (specifically getting Kylin Hill involved in the passing game as much as Washington State was able to get Max Borghi involved at Leach’s last stop).

2. BYU (2-0)

Navy and Troy aren't exactly titans of the college football world, but can we talk about how great BYU has looked so far this season? A 55-3 road win against Navy to open its season is absurdly impressive, especially when you consider how capable Navy looked its next game in a big comeback win over Tulane. And while Troy is just a Sun Belt foe, BYU looked equally impressive in its second game of the year Saturday night. BYU's biggest issue is a limited schedule that doesn't allow the Cougars many chances to pick up marquee wins. But don't be surprised if they run the table.

3. Miami (FL) (3-0)

D’Eriq King is one of the best college football players in America, and I’m excited he’s getting the opportunity to show it on a big stage. A week after leading Miami (FL) to a pretty major road win over Louisville, King followed it up with a surgical performance against Florida State. By halftime, Miami (FL) was already on cruise control up 38-3. Because of that, King didn’t get as gaudy of stats as some other QBs did over the weekend. But that’s only because they weren’t needed. The Hurricanes get a bye this upcoming week, which comes at the perfect time, since the next team on their schedule is Clemson. I think upsetting the Tigers is still a tough ask for Manny Diaz and Co. no matter how impressive they’ve looked this fall, but I have no doubt that Miami (FL)’s on-field performance this fall has vaulted it up the ACC’s “most likely to actually give Clemson a run for its money” rankings. I’d put the Hurricanes neck-and-neck with Notre Dame at this point.

4. Notre Dame (2-0)

With that shoutout in mind, it’s only fair to have the Fighting Irish right on the heels of the Hurricanes in these power rankings. And it feels weird having Notre Dame pretty high on here because I was super critical of how the offense looked under Tommy Rees the opening week of the season. But following that less-than-sexy two-score win over Duke up with a 50-plus point win against a South Florida team that, although not very impressive, has enough of a pulse that it shouldn’t even be losing by margins in that nieghborhood, is a good sign of the direction this thing is headed. And even if the offense isn’t going to be on par with some of the nation’s elite ones, the Fighting Irish defense should be able to hold its own up against just about anyone — Chuck Lea’s defense hasn’t allowed a point in its last 13 defensive drives, and has only allowed one TD in 23 total defensive drives this fall.

5. Pitt (3-0)

A lot of Pitt’s early success this fall hasn’t just been due to its defense — a staple of its program since Pat Narduzzi took over. A while that defense is still there (opposing teams are averaging just 10 points per game this fall), Pitt has shown itself to be more competent on offense this season, thanks to reliable play from Kenny Pickett and strong early showings from Jordan Addison and a returning Taysir Mack. Both of those receivers had TDs in the first half of Saturday’s clash against Louisville. But it was that signature Narduzzi defense that helped push this one across the finish lines. Pitt’s D allowed Louisville to gain just 83 total yards on its final eight drives, yielding just 3 points and intercepting three passes during that span.

6. Memphis (1-0)

This is probably going to come off as way too transitive property for some, but with such a small sample size of a season to deal with, I have to give this result (and the dominoes that followed) a decent amount of credit. Memphis’ season-opening win against Arkansas State didn’t seem all that impressive on paper. Arkansas State was unranked and Memphis was just seeing what it could do in a post Kenneth Gainwell-era. But that win looks better and better in subsequent weeks as new results roll in (and while Memphis sits on the COVID-induced sidelines). Arkansas State’s only other game was an extremely impressive win over Kansas State — a win that looks 10 times more impressive after the Wildcats shocked Oklahoma over the weekend. In a week ahead that boasts two separate head-to-head games against teams in the top 10 (Alabama vs. Texas A&M and Georgia vs. Auburn), I’m actually more excited to watch Memphis-SMU than any other game — assuming that Memphis gets the green light to return.

7. Marshall (2-0)

The biggest thing holding Marshall back is its opponents not allowing them to showcase what they can do. The Thundering Herd had their game against East Carolina postponed and already have this coming week’s first postponement for its game against Rice. But both of the games they’ve gotten to play have be impressive on different ends of the spectrum. Its season opening game against Eastern Kentucky wasn’t exactly a matchup against a juggernaut, but a 59-0 win is impressive no matter what way you slice it. And even though Marshall’s next win was by a considerably smaller margin (17-7 over Applachian State), it’s arguably the most impressive G5 vs. G5 showing of the young season.

8. UCF (2-0)

The Golden Knights’ offense has looked really, really impressive in all of their games this fall. They’re reaping the benefits of Dillon Gabriel going through his growing pains as a freshman and have surrounded him with a number of dynamic playmakers on offense to make his life easier. The defense? Not so much. But the object of the game is to score more points than your opponents, and with 100 points in two weeks of action, UCF is looking like a strong candidate to do that every time it shows up to play. And while giving up 49 points during this span makes the defense look a little questionable, those points have come from a Georgia Tech offense that has looked really explosive at times under new QB Jeff Sims, and an East Carolina team that has pretty routinely been one of the nation’s highest-scoring G5 programs over the past handful of years. A matchup this weekend against a Tulsa team that largely shut down Oklahoma State’s star-studded offense should be a sneaky-good game and tell us a lot.

9. Louisiana (3-0)

The Ragin' Cajuns' wins over the last two weeks have been tight and largely unimpressive, but Louisiana is still 3-0 and has a really impressive win at Iowa State on its resume -- a win that looks even better now that Iowa State bounced back with a road win over TCU in its Big 12 opener on Saturday. A mid-week matchup against Appalachian State in a week and a half is the toughest game left on Louisiana's schedule and its last chance to make a really big statement on a national stage.

10. Florida (1-0)

There are a lot of one-game candidates that could stake a claim to round out this section. Alabama beat Missouri in a game that had a deceiving final score — the Tide was up 35-3 in the second half and Missouri added some late points to save face, including a TD as time expired. Auburn looked good in a win over a ranked Kentucky squad that I warned was a lot better than many thought. That was the lone head-to-head matchup between ranked SEC teams on Saturday. And some might even argue that Georgia deserves a spot here because of a 27-point win (though I’d strongly suspect anyone arguing that just looked at the box score and didn’t watch that monstrosity of a game on Saturday). But I’m giving Florida the nod here due to the Gators’ 16-point road win over Ole Miss. It certainly wasn’t your standard Gator defensive performance, but there’s a lot to like about that offense, and it looks like Dan Mullen might finally having that Florida offense looking like the ones we became so accustomed to seeing 10-20 years ago. Kyle Trask throwing six touchdowns was not something I had on my expect-to-see Bingo card on Saturday, but it infused enough offense to get Florida on my radar and sneak them into the end of my power rankings this week.

10 eligible teams that also received legitimate consideration for this week’s power rankings: Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Texas, Baylor, Clemson, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, SMU.

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