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2018 TipTop 25 Week Five

Tulane is the first school picked at random from my hat

Welcome back to the college football ranking system that began with a preseason top 25 that was based solely on picking teams at random out of a hat, as shown above. You can see that Tulane was selected first, thereby securing our preseason #1 slot, but they lost their opener 23-17 in overtime to previously unranked Wake Forest, so their stay at the top was brief.

As the games are played, I am also ranking teams completely blind to their histories and "name" value, so that they are ranked solely based on what they do this season and, for now at least, on where they were ranked in the preseason (and on where their opponents were ranked in the preseason). Eventually, where teams were ranked in the preseason should have little or no impact on their current rankings.

All unranked FBS teams are treated the same here, but this ranking assumes that FCS teams are a level below, and therefore it is unacceptable for a ranked FBS team to struggle with an FCS team, let alone lose. On the other hand, beating an FCS team, regardless of how "impressive" the score, means nothing and is treated the same as though the winner did not play a game at all.

Alabama Still #1

Get used to this subheading: hard to see it changing this year. Alabama was not ranked in the preseason top 50, but they dropped a hydrogen bomb on #8 Mississippi in the third week, 62-7 on the road, and entered the TipTop 25 at #3. The next week they manhandled #17 Texas A&M 45-23, while #1 Virginia Tech was embarrassed 49-35 at unranked Old Dominion. Since #2 Central Florida hadn't played anyone of value (and they won't until their bowl game), Alabama rose to #1. This week Alabama ate a cupcake.

TipTop 25 After Week Five Games

Last week's top 25 saw a huge shake-up for the second straight week, and this week sees much the same. Only four ranked teams took upset losses this week, but another 4 performed poorly against unranked opponents. This week's TipTop 25 is as follows:

	Team	Record	LW	This Week's Result
#1	Alabama	5-0	1	Won 56-14 over Louisiana
#2	Louisiana State	5-0	3	Won 45-16 over #28 Mississippi (now #21)
#3	Central Florida	4-0	2	Won 45-14 over Pittsburgh
#4	North Carolina State	4-0	4	Won 35-21 over #25 Virginia (now unranked)
#5	Kentucky	5-0	5	Won 24-10 over #34 South Carolina
#6	Auburn	4-1	10	Won 24-13 over Southern Miss
#7	Oklahoma	5-0	8	Won 66-33 over Baylor
#8	Georgia	5-0	12	Won 38-12 over Tennessee
#9	Ohio State	5-0	9	Won 27-26 at #26 Penn State (now #15)
#10	Washington	4-1	14	Won 35-7 over Brigham Young
#11	West Virginia	4-0	16	Won 42-34 at #29 Texas Tech (now #22)
#12	Clemson	5-0	13	Won 27-23 over #40 Syracuse
#13	Colorado	4-0	17	Won 38-16 over UCLA
#14	Florida	4-1	19	Won 13-6 at unranked Mississippi State
#15	Penn State	4-1	26	Lost 27-26 to #9 Ohio State
#16	Notre Dame	5-0	36	Won 38-17 over #6 Stanford
#17	Stanford	4-1	6	Lost 38-17 at #36 Notre Dame (now #16)
#18	Oregon	4-1	11	Won 42-24 at California
#19	Michigan	4-1	38	Won 20-17 at Northwestern
#20	San Diego State	3-1	18	Did not play
#21	Mississippi	3-2	28	Lost 45-16 at #3 Louisiana State
#22	Texas Tech	3-2	29	Lost 42-34 to #16 West Virginia (now #11)
#23	Oklahoma State	4-1	30	Won 48-28 at Kansas
#24	Boise State	3-1	31	Won 34-14 at Wyoming
#25	Arizona State	3-2	21	Won 52-24 over Oregon State

Notes on Changes to This Week's TipTop 25

I moved Louisiana State past Central Florida because LSU has now beaten 3 good opponents, UCF none.

I moved Auburn past Oklahoma because of the "upset" loss Duke (#7 last week) took to unranked Virginia Tech. Duke, you see, had previously routed Army, who had previously fought Oklahoma to overtime.

Notre Dame (#36 last week) smashed Stanford (#6) 38-17, and that causes a cascading upheaval of the top 25. Oregon (#11) had previously lost to Stanford, so they drop in this ranking as well as Stanford, and San Diego State (#18) had also lost to Stanford, Arizona State (#21) had lost to San Diego State, Michigan State (#22) had lost to Arizona State, Utah State (#23) had lost to Michigan State, Indiana (#24) had lost to Michigan State, and Virginia (#25) had lost to Indiana. So all of those teams are affected by this one big Notre Dame victory. Furthermore, Michigan, who has lost only to Notre Dame, rises up into the top 25 on the coattails of the Irish.

Mississippi has lost badly twice now, but those losses have come to the #1 and #2 teams, and they have beaten Texas Tech, who has beaten Oklahoma State, who has beaten Boise State. Since Ole Miss was rated #32 in the preseason, Texas Tech #19, and Boise State #5, I decided to move this quartet into the rankings ahead of Arizona State, who was not ranked in the preseason top 50.

Close to the Top 25

The following teams are next in line to be ranked:

#26 Michigan State
#27 Utah State
#28 Indiana
#29 Virginia
#30 Syracuse
#31 Appalachian State
#32 Mississippi State
#33 Texas A&M
#39 South Florida

Looking Ahead to Next Week's Games

This week we have 3 games featuring ranked teams: #2 Louisiana State at #14 Florida, #25 Arizona State at #13 Colorado, and #20 San Diego State at #24 Boise State. As usual, we also have a bunch of ranked teams facing nearly-ranked opponents this week: #5 Kentucky at #33 Texas A&M, #6 Auburn at #32 Mississippi State, #28 Indiana at #9 Ohio State, and #26 Michigan State at #15 Penn State. Join me next week as we continue to hone the top 25 that was born from my magic hat.

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