Cats leapfrog two losing bluebloods, then climb over Oklahoma’s comatose form.
Kansas State’s victory Saturday wasn’t an impressive performance, other perhaps than the comeback. And Tulane received no votes this week, so the Cats wouldn’t appear to be the beneficiary of “beating a good opponent” vibes.
And yet the good guys moved up three spots to #14 in the week 3 poll, thanks to one team being absolutely hammered by a superior opponent, another tripping over their own collective anatomy, and a third pulling off a skin-of-the-teeth win over an opponent they should have road-graded.
Bonus: all three of those teams are extremely satisfying to the average Wildcat fan.
This week’s good guy: Kirk Kenney of the San Diego Union-Tribune, who has K-State all the way up at #10. Kenney was one of the Quinumvirate who had K-State at #12 last week. The Bad Guys include one of Kenney’s good-guy partners last week, Koki Riley of the (Baton Rouge) Advocate, as well as Tom Murphy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; they both had K-State at #21.
K-State is only joined by four other Big 12 teams this week, as usual. However, one of them is different this week. Kansas, #19 last week, tumbled out of the top 25 (to the mythical #33 spot) after losing to Illinois and getting field-stormed. The Jayhawks are replaced this week by Iowa State, who enter at #21 after an overtime win in ¡El Assico! which similarly ejected Iowa from the poll. Utah remains the top Big 12 team, but they slipped a spot to #12; Oklahoma State is #13 and Arizona remains at #20. Four Big 12 teams, including Kansas, also received votes.
Georgia remains atop the poll, garnering 54 first-place votes. That’s three less than last week, effectively losing them to Texas. After drilling Michigan at the Big House, Texas swapped places with Ohio State, although the Buckeyes still have the five first place votes they had last week compared to just four for Texas. (The discrepancy: someone didn’t get their ballot in last week, so there were only 62 voters instead of 63.)
Alabama remains at #4, and then the shuffling resulting from Notre Dame’s hilarious loss to Northern Illinois and Michigan’s downfall begins. Ole Miss moved up one to #5, Missouri to #6, and Tennessee all the way to #7 from #14 last week after brutalizing North Carolina State 51-10. Penn State, who barely escaped with their lives against Bowling Green, remained at #8, which was effectively a two-spot penalty; Oregon fell to places to #9 after a tight win over Boise State, while Miami (FL) and USC each moved up two spots to #10-11.
Next comes the Big 12’s Big 3, followed by Oklahoma at #15; again, this was effectively a two-spot penalty for the Sooners, earned by struggling to a 16-12 win over Houston. LSU at #16 was the final beneficiary of the Blue Blood massacre, moving up two spots; Michigan landed at #17, falling 7 rungs while #18 Notre Dame ate a 13-place fall, the largest of the week, in their annual “correction for over-rating”. Louisville, for reasons escaping us, moved up three spots and leapfrogged Arizona to #19.
Clemson follows the Cyclones and Arizona at #22, moving up three spots despite getting slaughtered by Georgia. That’s because everyone that was ahead of them lost and fell out of the poll. The three newcomers this week, closing out the top 25, are Nebraska (rewarded for their service in exposing Colorado as fraudulent), Boston College (belatedly rewarded for exposing Florida State as fraudulent last week), and Northern Illinois (rewarded for exposing Notre Dame as fraudulent).
Heheh.
Dropping from the poll were last week’s #19, 21, 23, and 24: Kansas, Iowa, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina State. The other three we’ve discussed; Tech fell after losing by a field goal at Syracuse, and received, along with NCSU, the harshest penalty: complete removal from the ballot. Kansas and Iowa, at least, remained in some voters’ top 25s.
Three of the four teams leading the ARV section were responsible for other teams’ falls. Illinois leads the pack, followed by Boise State, Texas A&M, and Syracuse. Memphis and Washington are next, then we find the landing spots for Iowa and Kansas after their tumbles. Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Liberty, Wisconsin, UNLV, and California make up the “seven to twenty point” group, followed by California (3 points after beating Auburn), and the three Big 12 teams receiving token recognition: BYU with 2 points, and UCF and TCU each getting a single nod at #25.