Brian’s College Football Top 5: Week 6
Photo from the SEC
Y’all.
What. A. Week.
It was one of the craziest weekends, full of great games, big upsets, and stormed fields.
I only do a top five each week, so here’s just some of the teams who unfortunately fell short of making it.
Florida avoided embarrassment and beat in state rival UCF.
Both Army and Navy are currently sitting at 5-0.
Virginia is 4-1 and looks very solid, in a year where I didn’t expect much from the Hoos.
Houston beat TCU for Willie Fritz’s first Big 12 victory.
Washington and Minnesota both got big home victories over Michigan and USC.
Indiana (!!!!!) is the first team to be bowl eligible!
Like I said, it was a crazy weekend.
But even in that craziness, there are five teams that made the cut.
5. Texas A&M Aggies
Texas A&M this season is an absolutely fantastic lesson in how necessary it sometimes is to just shut the hell up.
For years and years, A&M was the next big thing. A top contender. A true SEC fighter.
They always fell short.
Even this year, the first year under Mike Elko, they spent the preseason talking a lot about how Notre Dame is always overrated, before Notre Dame came into Kyle Field and beat them.
Since then, I haven’t heard a peep from them.
They started winning, but I didn’t think much of it.
They were 4-1 with not many impressive wins, and welcomed 9th ranked Missouri to Kyle Field on Saturday.
Even then, I didn’t hear much noise.
They let that happen on the field, as the Aggies absolutely stomped Missouri 41-10.
If they keep this up, and the schedule does favor them a bit, they could be heading into the renewed rivalry with Texas sitting at 10-1.
4. Arkansas Razorbacks
This one had been coming.
Arkansas has had great games offensively. They’ve had some great games defensively. But they’ve simply just fallen short from upset wins over Oklahoma State and Texas A&M.
So I wasn’t super surprised that they shut down a high flying Tennessee offense, and got a 19-14 upset victory over the Vols.
I had Sam Pittman dead to rights, but he might just be saving his job this year.
Good for him.
Arkansas looks solid.
3. Miami Hurricanes
I’ll start with this.
Miami probably should not have won this game.
A missed targeting call (maybe? Who even knows what targeting is these days?) and a missed lineman downfield call on the game winning touchdown means that Cal probably should have come away with a victory.
But despite that, it doesn’t change how Miami was down 35-10 in a cross country game that starts at 10:30 P.M. EST, and fought all the way back to win 39-38.
Missed calls or not, the fact that Miami even had a chance to win that game says a lot.
The fact that they did win says even more.
2. Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks
If you’re not a college football super fan, you may not understand what a great job Bryant Vincent is doing with ULM.
It didn’t matter where you looked this season.
Vegas had their O/U win total set for 2.5.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly’s data showed them as the worst team in the FBS.
The Athletic had them at 131 out of 134.
ULM is 4-1, and just upset the heavy Sun Belt favorite James Madison at home.
They might genuinely go bowling in year one, despite everything being stacked against them.
This is a remarkable season so far, and I hope it continues.
1. Vanderbilt Commodores
Come on.
You knew who had to be number 1 this week.
If you know college football, you knew years ago that Diego Pavia was a baller.
He showed that at New Mexico State countless times.
If you didn’t, you found out week 1 when Vandy upset Virginia Tech.
And if still didn’t, well you surely do now.
This wasn’t a game in which Alabama made boatloads of mistakes and had tons of turnovers that gave Vandy easy touchdowns (though they did have one pick six).
Vandy was just amazing offensively, and never trailed all day.
Let me repeat that.
Vanderbilt did not trail once against Alabama.
In football.
What. A. Week.
