Clay Travis
Videos by OutKick
What a weekend of college football. From noon eastern all the way until Texas at California ended well after one in the morning on the east coast, we had an incredible day of games.
I mean, absolutely incredible.
Props to ESPN and Fox schedulers for slotting the games all day, there were great games on at every hour of Saturday.
Here’s Outkick’s top ten.
Reminder: at Outkick we only rank teams based on what we’ve seen on that field. That is, I try not to be impacted by preseason rankings at all, just by the actual play on the field.
With that in mind, here we go:
1. Louisville
It’s probably unrealistic to expect Louisville to continue to play the way they’ve played in the first three weeks of the season, but if they somehow did they’d be the greatest college football team in the history of the sport.
So, yeah, that’s probably not going to happen.
But what a start!
And regardless of how long they can keep up this performance, does Louisville deserve to be ranked as the number one team in the country a quarter of the way through the college football season?
Without question.
2. Alabama
The Crimson Tide spotted Ole Miss a 21 point lead and then roared back to take control of the game. If the Tide had maintained their 48-30 lead I would probably have kept them at number one, but the lapses down the stretch which cost us a cover, and left the game in doubt until the final minute, drops them to number two.
3. Ohio State
The Buckeyes were absolutely dominant over Oklahoma. Urban Meyer’s team is young, but they look to be the class of the Big Ten once more. And this win, convincing as it was, may leave Ohio State with some margin for error now in the Big Ten.
Right now it’s hard to foresee the Buckeyes losing more than one game this season.
To me, there is a big drop off right now after the top three teams in the country.
4. Houston
The Cougars trailed 16-12 with around 11 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter before taking off on a 28 point unanswered barrage to close out Cincinnati 40-16. Now we all get to look forward to a potential match-up of undefeated Louisville against undefeated Cincinnati.
5. Texas A&M
Credit the Aggies for going on the road and taking control of the game against the Gus Bus. Now will we get a third straight overtime game in the Arkansas-Texas A&M game at Jerry World?
6. Stanford
The Cardinal dominated USC for the third time in a year.
In the next four weeks Stanford plays at UCLA, at Washington and at Notre Dame.
Win all three of those road games — which is clearly a tall order — and Stanford would be substantial favorites in every game remaining on its schedule.
7. Michigan State
Wow, what a performance by the Spartans.
I told you that Dantonio on the road plus eight points with two weeks to prepare was stealing.
And it was.
Assuming the Spartans beat Wisconsin, which I think they will, then Michigan State should be undefeated on October 29th when Michigan rolls into East Lansing.
8. Arkansas
I’m bumping the Razorbacks up because their road win over TCU is better than anything Washington or Michigan have done thus far.
Now comes the neutral site game against Texas A&M, which should be close to a straight pick’em.
This one should be fun.
9. Washington
Yes, the Huskies still haven’t been challenged, but they also haven’t played anyone either. But there is something to be said for dominating bad opponents.
We’ll see what happens in two weeks in that Friday night game against Stanford.
10. Michigan
The Wolverines spotted Colorado 21 points and then surged back for the win.
At this point it would be a pretty big surprise if Michigan isn’t undefeated when they head to Michigan State.
