Brian’s College Football Top 5: Week 7

Photo from UT Athletics

This was one of the best weekend’s of college football we’ve had in a long while, which made it difficult to pick a top 5.

Nevertheless, I powered through and narrowed it down to 5 teams.

5. Colorado Buffaloes

Winless seasons don’t happen much in college football, especially for power 5 teams (other than the weird COVID year where 9 total teams had winless seasons, but it’s hard to count that).

The last full winless season from a P5 school was Kansas in 2015.

Colorado looked to be headed down that path, with a generally awful team and a tough schedule ahead of them.

But the Buffs avoided that fate, with a 20-13 win over Cal in overtime, meaning there will not be any winless team in college football this year.

It was a great win for Colorado, even if it’s the only one they get this season.

4. Georgia Southern Eagles

Someone needs to teach the new kid on the block some lessons.

JMU jumped from FCS to FBS, started out 5-0 and found themselves ranked in the top 25.

The newbie was getting a little too comfortable, but Georgia Southern took care of that when the Dukes came to visit Statesboro, upsetting the JMU 45-38 to give them their first loss of the season.

Clay Helton is having a very impressive first season at GSU, with two big wins under his belt.

3. Utah Utes

Speaking of teaching the new guy some lessons, Utah had to make sure Lincoln Riley didn’t show up and run the PAC 12 from day 1.

It wasn’t easy. USC got out to an early lead and it looked like it was going to be a loooong night for the Utes at home.

But Utah, having lost their two previous tough games this year, had enough, and fought their way back.

A Cam Rising touchdown run on 4th down, followed by a Cam Rising 2 point conversion run with under a minute to go meant that Utah got a big win to keep their PAC 12 hopes alive, and USC’s perfect season bid has come to an end.

2. TCU Horned Frogs

What year 0? TCU ain’t need no damn year 0!

Even trailing early against Oklahoma State, Sonny Dykes team did not falter, and fought their way back for a double OT win to remain perfect.

In a wide open Big 12, TCU is now in pole position to end up in Dallas to fight for a Big 12 championship.

And this is all in Sonny Dykes first year!

Unreal.

1. Tennessee Volunteers

But c’mon.

There was ever only one option at number 1.

After 15 years of losing to the rival Crimson Tide, Tennessee finally broke the curse.

But it wasn’t just them beating Alabama.

It was the fact that they did it at home in front of over 100K Vols fans. It was the fact that it cemented the fact that Tennessee truly is returning to form under Josh Heupel.

It maybe makes Tennessee a player in the college football playoff?

We’ll see about that last one. They still have Georgia on the schedule.

But Vols fans won’t think about that until it’s game week.

The drought is over. The Vols have finally beat Nick Saban’s Alabama.