| Rank | +/- | Team | WinPct | SoS | Adjusted | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off. | Def. | Pace | |||||||||
| 1 | -- | Alabama | 0.984 | 0.564 | 35 | 39.3 | 1 | 7.6 | 1 | 147.3 | 121 |
| 2 | -- | LSU | 0.934 | 0.594 | 20 | 31.7 | 4 | 11.0 | 2 | 155.1 | 111 |
| 3 | -- | Boise St. | 0.882 | 0.480 | 68 | 30.6 | 8 | 13.6 | 7 | 157.2 | 101 |
| 4 | +4 | Oregon | 0.879 | 0.573 | 28 | 31.5 | 5 | 14.2 | 10 | 181.1 | 6 |
| 5 | +1 | Stanford | 0.872 | 0.564 | 34 | 33.7 | 3 | 15.7 | 19 | 157.3 | 100 |
| 6 | -2 | Florida St. | 0.869 | 0.552 | 41 | 30.7 | 7 | 14.4 | 13 | 156.8 | 105 |
| 7 | -2 | Oklahoma | 0.853 | 0.613 | 10 | 23.9 | 30 | 11.8 | 3 | 175.1 | 14 |
| 8 | +1 | South Carolina | 0.849 | 0.500 | 59 | 28.8 | 12 | 14.4 | 11 | 153.8 | 115 |
| 9 | +1 | TCU | 0.848 | 0.375 | 106 | 28.6 | 14 | 14.4 | 12 | 156.9 | 102 |
| 10 | +5 | Florida | 0.833 | 0.605 | 16 | 26.4 | 19 | 13.9 | 9 | 156.8 | 103 |
| 11 | -- | Notre Dame | 0.828 | 0.596 | 19 | 23.7 | 31 | 12.7 | 4 | 160.3 | 87 |
| 12 | -5 | Wisconsin | 0.822 | 0.523 | 46 | 34.0 | 2 | 18.5 | 34 | 152.8 | 118 |
| 13 | +1 | Texas | 0.814 | 0.456 | 81 | 27.5 | 18 | 15.3 | 15 | 160.6 | 86 |
| 14 | -2 | Texas A&M | 0.812 | 0.608 | 13 | 23.1 | 35 | 12.9 | 5 | 182.7 | 4 |
| 15 | +2 | USC | 0.802 | 0.581 | 26 | 27.7 | 17 | 15.9 | 21 | 163.8 | 63 |
| 16 | +2 | Michigan St. | 0.791 | 0.555 | 38 | 22.6 | 41 | 13.2 | 6 | 161.6 | 81 |
| 17 | -4 | Oklahoma St. | 0.789 | 0.587 | 23 | 30.2 | 10 | 17.8 | 28 | 183.2 | 3 |
| 18 | +3 | Georgia | 0.789 | 0.482 | 64 | 30.0 | 11 | 17.7 | 27 | 165.5 | 51 |
| 19 | -3 | Ohio St. | 0.760 | 0.457 | 80 | 25.9 | 24 | 16.3 | 22 | 160.8 | 85 |
| 20 | -1 | Nebraska | 0.759 | 0.555 | 39 | 26.3 | 21 | 16.6 | 23 | 165.5 | 53 |
| 21 | NA | Virginia Tech | 0.741 | 0.502 | 58 | 22.2 | 45 | 14.6 | 14 | 159.2 | 93 |
| 22 | +1 | Kansas St. | 0.735 | 0.605 | 15 | 31.5 | 6 | 20.9 | 60 | 153.9 | 114 |
| 23 | +1 | Michigan | 0.723 | 0.590 | 22 | 30.4 | 9 | 20.7 | 58 | 155.1 | 112 |
| 24 | -4 | West Virginia | 0.722 | 0.502 | 57 | 28.2 | 16 | 19.2 | 40 | 169.4 | 33 |
| 25 | NA | Arizona St. | 0.719 | 0.586 | 24 | 26.2 | 22 | 18.0 | 30 | 168.5 | 37 |
Rankings through games of 2012-09-23
New entries: Virginia Tech, Arizona St..
Dropped out: Cincinnati, Missouri.
Despite last week's plea for Alabama to stumble, it appears that didn't happen. What did happen, though, is that Oregon stepped up and thumped then-(38) Arizona in a major way. Florida State struggled against (32) Clemson, but finally put them away in the 4th quarter; allowing your opponent to score 37 points, though, isn't exactly the path to the BCS title game.
The story of the rankings right now, though, is change from last year. There are definitely fundamental changes from last year -- Andrew Luck isn't at Stanford, Kellen Moore isn't at Boise, Wisconsin can't seem to run the ball, and Arkansas is in free-fall to the point that Eddie has renounced his Hawgs and purged his office of Razorback paraphernalia -- but since the four games played this year only account for just less than half of the weight of the rankings so far, TFG is still figuring that out. And while some teams are managing to hold on to some appearance of previous glory (see: Stanford), others have fallen off the cliff (see: Arkansas and Houston).
There's still a lot of football left to play, but at the risk of sounding like an Alabama homer I'd like to leave you with these few statistics:
- Alabama has had 252 plays from scrimmage;
- They have scored on 28 of these (11.1%);
- In the 224 plays where they haven't scored, they got first downs on 84 of them (37.5%); meaning
- Alabama has either scored or picked up a first down on 44.4% of their plays.
And while it's likely that Alabama won't win the title, it's difficult to imagine someone being able to stand up to them right now.
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