2020 Couch Power 10, Week 9
Welcome back to the Power 10! If it feels like too long since you've seen one of these, that's because I did not release one last week. When nearly half (no, that's not an exaggeration) of a Saturday's college football slate gets cancelled due to COVID-19, it stands to reason that not a whole lot will happen in terms of earth-shaking results, and sure enough, for probably the first time all season-- I'm too lazy to do the research confirming it -- we saw a week with no ranked teams losing. Thus, there was no movement in the Power 10 to speak of.
But now there is! Granted, 15 more games saw postponement this past weekend, but by virtue of being able to at least have 4 games between ranked teams proceed, we saw some separation! Ohio State survived an unexpectedly tough test from Indiana, Northwestern staked a claim to the Big Ten West over Wisconsin, and Oklahoma won Bedlam yet again. We had several scares and close calls for ranked sides, and what's more, we had another instance of a ranked team losing to an unranked team, as the Fightin' Falwells of Liberty University made like their patron saint Donald Trump and blew a lead, suffering their first L. Tonight, in honor of the first College Football Playoff rankings of 2020, a milestone seriously thought might never come, we unleash our latest Couch Power 10.
Just a reminder that this is not a definitive ranking on how good the teams are, or on who I think will be/deserves to be in the playoff at the end of the year. Rather, it's more of a "What if preseason rankings and bigwig bias didn't predetermine the top teams" kind of thing, an ideal ranking of the country's teams based on what they've actually proved on the field to date:
1. Alabama
Holy moly. Nobody thought Kentucky was going to beat Alabama, I get it. But the Wildcats are not a bad team. For Bama to beat them 63-3 (you can stop rubbing your eyes, that was the real score) is a scary message for the rest of the nation.
2. Notre Dame
Notre Dame had a bye week after their incredibly impressive four-week stretch of blowout win, blowout win, defeat of Clemson, road defeat of Boston College. It's been a great, thus-far-unbeaten season for the Irish, it's such a shame it will come to an end next week at North Carolina.
3. Cincinnati
Just like they did against SMU and Memphis, Cincinnati passed another tough in-conference test on the road at UCF. Though this game was considerably more competitive than the two aforementioned ones, the Bearcats dug deep on both sides of the ball to seal the game in the 4th quarter. As long as Cincy doesn't take their foot off the gas, they're not just poised for an AAC title; they're a legitimate playoff contender.
4. Northwestern
Well, talk about a statement being made. In what was likely a de facto Big Ten West Championship, Northwestern stymied favored team-- and fellow unbeaten --Wisconsin with suffocating defense and just-efficient-enough offense. The Wildcats' coach and players all had their feathers ruffled by a College GameDay analyst's comments decrying their athletic ability, and that emotion clearly fueled them throughout this high-stakes matchup. In a twist virtually nobody expected, barring a major upset in any of their last three games, Northwestern could be headed to the Big Ten Championship, unbeaten and playing for a spot in the College Football Playoff.
5. BYU
The good news for BYU is that they maintained their perfect season by demolishing North Alabama, 66-14. Blowing out inferior teams is what good teams are supposed to do. The bad news for BYU is that they have only one more game this season, 3 weeks from now, so if they're not ranked as high as they'd like in the upcoming College Football Playoff rankings, they're short on chances to move up.
6. Coastal Carolina
Coastal Carolina's Cinderella season just keeps getting more and more impressive. The Chanticleers improved to 8-0 on the year with their win this weekend, but it wasn't just any old win; for the second time this season, they knocked off a Sun Belt stalwart. With their statement victory over two-time defending conference champions Appalachian State, Coastal is now 2-0 against the only teams to ever appear in the Sun Belt conference championship. It was a tough call to determine which mid-major team deserved top billing, but ESPN's FPI rankings state that BYU's schedule was slightly tougher to date thus far, so they stay ahead for now.
7. Ohio State
What right do I have to drop Ohio State two spots for beating a Top 10 team? I can practically hear the Buckeye faithful shrieking from Columbus. Let me be clear, I think Ohio State quite possibly has the highest ceiling in the country. I also think that Indiana is a legitimately good team and Saturday's victory was a legitimately good win. That said, it was a game against a clearly overmatched opponent that they could have put away a number of times and instead let them back in with a chance to tie the game, in their home stadium. And more notably, other than Indiana, their opponents to date have a 2-13 record. It's hard to get too jazzed about their unbeaten season thus far when that's the track record.
8. Marshall
For the 4th time this season, Marshall's game got COVID-cancelled. It's rotten luck for the Thundering Herd, who are running out of ways to play themselves into contention for a New Year's Six Bowl.
9. USC
While Thanksgiving week tends to be the penultimate week of the college football season, college football in 2020 means you have some teams bearing down the home stretch of their season, while others, namely those in the Pac-12, are three games in. The College Football Playoff may get a whole lot wrong, but I don't envy their task of trying to compare 3-0 teams to 9-1 teams. That said, USC's start is a good one, building on two thrilling comeback wins over both Arizona teams with an impressively comfortable win over Utah.
10. Oregon
Again, it's just difficult to get a read on a team that's played so much less than their nationwide peers. But while the preseason Pac-12 frontrunners have not looked the part of a national contender yet, they've done all they need to do thus far in dispatching 3 Pac-12 opponents with relative ease, though UCLA stuck around a good bit longer than they would have liked last weekend.
Just missed: Florida, Clemson, Indiana, Texas A&M, Miami, Bye Weeks That Have Nothing To Do With COVID
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