The Couch Power 10 Is Back!

What's that? College football is back? Yes, it's true. You might have missed it amidst the return of club soccer, the return of the school year, the return of your standard television programming, and well, a fascist sex criminal using his unfettered power to destroy everything around us. There's a lot going on, but we're in September, which means the three sweetest words can officially be uttered: it's football season!!!

This is another season full of changes. We avoided any major conference realignment this offseason, but before even its second iteration, saw a change to the 12-team playoff as well as proposals to expand the field further, and coaches and players both jumping from school to school willy-nilly. And yet? Whether your first taste of college football came over a week ago with the "Week 0" kickoff in Dublin, or this past weekend which marked opening weekend for most schools, you saw that even while all the trappings around it look different...this is still college football. And college football delivers. You want big games between two big-name programs? You want upsets? Thrillers? Comedies of errors? Heisman-level performances? Week 1 had each in ample supply.

Just a refresher, since it's been nary a year since you've heard from this ranking: 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. Don't be mad cuz I'm doin' me better than you doin' you:

1. Ohio State

Something that's slightly new from previous years of the Couch Power 10 is that, to assist with gauging teams' early-season performances, I'm implementing another Commissioner Daniel Reasonable Change to College Football: the "preseason rankings" are actually just last season's final AP rankings. "That doesn't make any sense," you traditionalists cry, "what a team did last season has zero basis on what they'll do this season!" That's not an unfair statement-- so tell me, who's good this season, and how do you know? What's that, you don't know, because no games were played yet so it's all guesswork? Right. What isn't guesswork is what we saw from this program last season, so why not let teams start the season where they ended last year and let them prove themselves from there?

Anyways, this looooong preamble aside, the good news is that whether you use more traditional metrics or Daniel's Meritocracy Preseason Rank (tm), there's no question the # 1 team in the land is Ohio State. The reigning national champions emerged victorious from one of the biggest Week 1 games in college football history, as they were rude hosts to real-life preseason # 1 Texas, suffocating QB Arch Manning in his widely-anticipated starting debut.

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2. Miami

Both of last year's national championship teams had a mammoth opening game to start this season, and while Notre Dame's didn't quite command the same audience as Ohio State's, the Fighting Irish's trip to South Beach was an incredibly compelling early test of legitimacy for both title hopefuls. In the end, it was Miami and new QB Carson Beck that outgunned their opponents, holding off a late challenge from the defending runners-up to make a statement on the national stage and announce themselves as the team to beat in the ACC.

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3. LSU

Clemson may technically be the reigning ACC champions, but they're ranked far enough behind Texas and Notre Dame that LSU can't, on the surface at least, claim to own the most impressive victory of any team in Week 1. That said, I will say, having watched that entire game... I came away from the first week impressed the most not with Ohio State, nor Miami, nor anyone else that scored a ranked win, but LSU. The Tigers went into one of the most difficult road environments in the land, and rallied from a halftime deficit to score a huge road win, behind some dominant defense, and some measured, solid, smart offense. That's 2 straight for LSU in the battle for both "Death Valley" and the "tigers" moniker, and where last one clinched a national championship, this win might position them well for another one

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4. Florida State

What a difference a year makes. This time 365 days ago, then-reigning ACC champions Florida State already was 0-2, and was en route to a disastrous 3-9 season that put coach Mike Norvell on the hot seat, and caused Seminole fans everywhere to wonder if their magical 13-0 season the year before was going to be a one-off. Fast forward to present day, and the 14.5-point underdog 'Noles shellacked big bad Alabama in Tallahassee, backing up their new quarterback Thomas Castellanos's bold pregame smack talk.

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5. Tennessee

Tennessee's Week 1 win didn't generate a whole lot of buzz, surprisingly, likely due to it happening concurrently with "the game of the century." But, even if Syracuse didn't make the AP preseason polls, they started the year ranked 20th in the Meritocracy Rank, and the Volunteers' demolition of them in Atlanta showed that Josh Heupel's crew might be a force in the SEC yet again, for the 3rd time in the last 4 years.

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6. Iowa State

For the most part, this Week 1 Power 10 splits pretty cleanly into two halves, but Iowa State is the lone exception, standing in a sort of middle tier of its own. For starters, they have played two games already while most of America has only played one: their Week 0 win in Dublin over Kansas State may not have turned too many heads, but it's a ranked win, and a ranked conference win at that. And the Cyclones may have started further back in the Daniel's Meritocracy Preseason Rank (tm) than the handful of teams behind them, but like them, posted a dominant win over an overmatched opponent in Week 1, pasting last year;s FCS runners-up South Dakota by 48 points in Ames.

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7. Oregon

Oregon kicks off the second tier of this Power 10: teams that finished in the Top 10 of last season and opened the year with a dominant display. The Ducks, last year's # 3 team (after entering the postseason as the only unbeaten side in the land) got things started with a 59-13 beatdown of FCS titans Montana State.

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8. Penn State

Penn State, last year's semifinalists and # 4 team kicked things off with a 35-point win over former BCS spoilers Nevada.

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9. Georgia

The Dawgs may have had a disappointing finish to their topsy-turvy season, but the reigning SEC champions and Top 5 finishers started this one in style, with a 45-7 cruise over upstarts Marshall.

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10. Ole Miss

No Jaxson Dart? No problem. While preseason Top 10 teams fell around them, the Lane Train left the station without incident, draxxing Sun Belt opponents Georgia State sklounst, with new QB Austin Simmons leading them to an eye-popping scoreline of 63-7.

Just missed: South Carolina, BYU, Arizona State, SMU, Missouri, the optimism I felt about UNC Football in mid-October 2023

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The Playoff Picture according to The Couch:

(5) Tennessee v (12) South Florida

(6) Iowa State v (11) South Carolina

(7) Oregon v (10) Ole Miss

(8) Penn State v (9) Georgia

ROSE BOWL: (1) Ohio State v PSU/UGA winner

ORANGE BOWL: (2) Miami v ORE/MISS winner

COTTON BOWL: (3) LSU v ISU/USC winner

SUGAR BOWL: (4) Florida State v TENN/USF winner