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2019 TipTop 25 Week Thirteen

Georgia Southern is picked first out of my hat for 2019

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 Georgia Southern was selected first, thereby securing our preseason #1 slot, but they lost their opener 55-3 at previously unranked Louisiana State, so their stay at the top was brief.

As the games have been played, I have been ranking teams completely blind to their histories and "name" value, so that they are ranked entirely based on what they did this season and, for the first few weeks at least, on where they were ranked in the preseason (and on where their opponents were ranked in the preseason).

All unranked FBS teams are treated the same here, but this ranking assumes that all FCS teams are at a lower power level, and therefore it is unacceptable for a ranked FBS team to struggle with an FCS team, let alone lose. Similarly, 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.

Ohio State Back to #1

MS Paint portrait of an Ohio State player

Well, look who's back. Honestly, you could go with either Louisiana State or Ohio State for #1. LSU has played the tougher schedule, and they have the most impressive win (beating Alabama, with a healthy Tua, on the road). However, with their win over #5 Penn State this week, Ohio State's schedule has crept back to within reasonable range of LSU's schedule, and OSU has unquestionably outperformed LSU. LSU has an 8 point win over Texas and a 3 point win over Auburn, while no one has come within a touchdown of Ohio State. So we are returning Ohio State to the top of the list.

TipTop 25 After Week Thirteen Games

Last week, our top 25 teams took 5 upset losses, but 4 of those were to fellow ranked teams, so the following top 25 remained fairly stable (as it has for much of the season). Well, this week only one of our ranked teams took an upset loss, which might well be a record low for a full week of games. As a result, this week's ranking has barely changed at all from last week's list. But we do have that aforementioned change at the top. This week's TipTop 25 is as follows:

	Team	Record	LW	This Week's Result
#1	Ohio State	11-0	2	Won 28-17 over #5 Penn State
#2	Louisiana State	11-0	1	Won 56-20 over unrated Arkansas
#3	Alabama	10-1	3	Won 66-3 over an FCS team
#4	Clemson	11-0	4	Did not play
#5	Penn State	9-2	5	Lost 28-17 at #1 Ohio State
#6	Georgia	10-1	6	Won 19-13 over #29 Texas A&M
#7	Florida	9-2	7	Did not play
#8	Auburn	8-3	8	Won 52-0 over an FCS team
#9	Wisconsin	9-2	10	Won 45-24 over unrated Purdue
#10	Michigan	9-2	11	Won 39-14 at unrated Indiana
#11	Iowa	8-3	12	Won 19-10 over unrated Illinois
#12	Minnesota	10-1	13	Won 38-22 at unrated Northwestern
#13	Notre Dame	9-2	14	Won 40-7 over unrated Boston College
#14	Oklahoma	10-1	15	Won 28-24 over #25 Texas Christian
#15	Baylor	10-1	16	Won 24-10 over #22 Texas
#16	Cincinnati	10-1	17	Won 15-13 over unrated Temple
#17	Memphis	10-1	18	Won 49-10 at unrated South Florida
#18	Navy	8-2	19	Won 35-28 over #20 Southern Methodist
#19	Southern Methodist	9-2	20	Lost 35-28 at #19 Navy
#20	Iowa State	7-4	21	Won 41-31 over unrated Kansas
#21	Texas	6-5	22	Lost 24-10 at #16 Baylor
#22	Oklahoma State	8-3	23	Won 20-13 at unrated West Virginia
#23	Kansas State	7-4	24	Won 30-27 at unrated Texas Tech
#24	Texas Christian	5-6	25	Lost 28-24 at #15 Oklahoma
#25	Utah	10-1	26	Won 35-7 at unrated Arizona

Notes on Changes to This Week's TipTop 25

Oregon, who had been ranked #9 last week, falls all the way out of the top 25 after their upset loss at unranked Arizona State. That is because Oregon has not beaten a rated team. Their previous high rating was based solely on the fact that they had not taken an upset loss. Now that they have taken an upset loss, they have no leg to stand on. Utah has performed better against a very similar schedule, so Utah gets slot #25, and Oregon comes in right behind them at #26.

Close to the Top 25

The following teams are next in line to be ranked:

#26 Oregon
#27 Boise State
#28 Texas A&M
#29 Air Force
#30 Southern Cal
#31 Brigham Young
#32 Tennessee
#33 Mississippi State
#34 Appalachian State
#35 Louisiana

End of the TipTop 25

The point of this top 25 has been an experiment with random preseason ratings and with trying to ignore teams' historic reputations and "brand name" values. Ideally, after next week's games the preseason ratings should mean very little, so this will be my last TipTop 25. Starting next week, I'll be doing what I normally do after Thanksgiving, which is commenting on the AP poll top 25 each week until I fix the final AP poll top 25 in January.

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