Manny King John
This has been a historic year for college football, and it’s only has been six weeks. Already, 40 ranked teams have lost, including defending national champion Alabama on Saturday night. That’s the most in the first six weeks of the season in the AP poll era since 1936, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
Hands down, the biggest surprise thus far was the stunning upset the Texas A&M and Jimbo Fisher pulled over the National Champions, Alabama and Nick Saban. The Aggies had lost two consecutive games to Arkansas and Mississippi State, also looking very below average against Colorado weeks prior. The Aggies’ victory is perhaps the biggest upset of the College Football Playoff era. It snapped Alabama’s 19-game winning streak, its 100-game streak against unranked opponents and Saban’s 24-game perfect run against his former assistants.
The window for Clemson’s playoff hopes has been reborn with the losses to other top-ranked teams like Alabama. As long as the Crimson Tide win their next six games and enter the SEC championship game with an 11-1 record, a victory in Atlanta probably gets them back in the top four.
The now top four teams are #1 Georgia Bulldogs, #2 Iowa Hawkeyes, #3 Cincinnati Bearcats, and #4 Oklahoma Sooners. All four of these teams have yet to suffer a loss.
The Georgia Bulldogs will be tested going forward, facing a very dangerous Kentucky squad. Then the real test against the #20 ranked Florida after, all while awaiting their quarterback, JT Daniels, to return. Iowa is squarely in the playoff conversation at 6-0 and has no ranked opponents left on its schedule. Cincinnati is in a bad ACC and has to continue winning impressively. The Sooners will face TCU this week, a team they have beaten seven straight times. On the other hand, past powerhouses like Auburn and LSU has completely fallen out of the playoff picture.
This is the year of the unexpected. With half the season left to play, expect the playoff board to continue to shuffle teams in and out.
