OT - football rankings are so whack

Cal is ranked largely in part to beating a terrible Texas team. Michigan State is barely beating Purdue and is ranked 2 largely from beating a clearly not great Oregon team. Northwestern is destroying a Minnesota team who almost beat TCU. Obviously, it’ll never happen but I almost believe they should delay putting out rankings till week 6 or so. These rankings affect future rankings but are often based on nothing.

By Tim Eckert-Fong on 10.03.15 11:38am

I agree, the rankings are junk

And the number of cupcake games that teams play to juice their win records doesn’t help—those games shouldn’t even count.

By worldblee on 10.03.15 3:30pm

Without rankings to argue about, millions of football fans would have nothing to do and would no doubt just make trouble for everyone else.

By Cardinal&Orange on 10.03.15 7:18pm

Great Interview

Indeed, this game should be perfect for vintage Stanford football. What do we need? Strong execution. Limited miscues. A defense that shows up and contains the Wildcat running game. A full 60 minutes of play, without stepping off the gas in the second half. That said, if they can get a solid lead early in the game, it would be prudent to rest some key players to ensure they are healthy for UCLA in the next game.

And yes, in reference to the above, Michigan State looked underwhelming vs. Purdue and barely escaped with the W. Certainly NOT the #2 team in the nation right now. O-line was ineffective in the 2nd half, while the defense was slashed for three straight scores. They are buoyed by the Oregon win, which is looking less impressive than it did at the time; otherwise, the season has not been impressive thus far. Meanwhile, Northwestern just smothered Minnesota with an overpowering display of defense. It’s been a strange, unpredictable season so far.

By Jeff Tarnungus on 10.03.15 12:27pm

Michigan State Game

shows the importance of escaping with a win with a poor performance against a weak team. Their Purdue win will look better than our Northwestern loss though, to be fair, Northwestern is looking pretty darn tough with another shutout against an arguably solid Big 10 team (I guess). Just hope we don’t end up 10 – 2 and out of the playoffs due to our two losses……………Harbaugh and Michigan looking pretty good too………..only loss by a touchdown to Utah at Utah. There will be some showdown games coming up in the Big 10.

We need to play to win out.

By hoyaparanoia on 10.03.15 12:49pm

Can't argue with that!

By Jeff Tarnungus on 10.03.15 1:04pm

Yep

You get credit for escaping close calls, like Michigan State did today.

Northwestern is making that loss to them look better and better the more they win. Michigan hasn’t given up any points in 8 quarters. Iowa is 5-0 with today’s win over Wisconsin, and has a favorable remaining schedule for the most part. And as of writing this comment, Indiana is leading Ohio State 10-6 with 4 minutes left in the first half. The B1G is shaping up to be interesting this year in unexpected ways.

With all the stuff that is happening, we do need to play to win out, I agree.

By Brendan Ross on 10.03.15 2:03pm