It is the halfway point of the college football season. Depressing, right?
The bad news is that the season is about to be on its downward slope. The good news is that we’re seven weeks closer to figuring out who will duke it out in the College Football Playoff.
Conference strength is a big part of that equation, so with that in mind, here are your conference power rankings…
- SEC
With all four of the league’s top ten teams facing off against each other, carnage was natural. Instead of surging Florida and Texas A&M, old faithful programs Alabama and LSU emerged. Outside of that, Ole Miss had a complete debacle at Memphis where the Rebels fell out of the playoff mix giving up 31 unanswered points.
Auburn got its first conference win, and Georgia maintained relevance by barely squeaking out a win against Missouri. This league continues to prove its weaknesses on a weekly basis, but it remains the strongest in the nation.
- Big 12
This league has been about the three teams at the top: Baylor, TCU, and Oklahoma. All three had convincing wins a week ago, especially the 55-0 beatdown the Sooners administered on the road against Kansas State.
Oklahoma State is the other unbeaten in this conference, and the Cowboys were on a bye. Very little has been shocking with the teams in this league, and it will take a couple of middle-of-the-road squads stepping up to catch the SEC.
- Pac-12
Utah just continues to win. The Utes were down in the second half against Arizona State, yet they found a way to walk away from the Sun Devils at the end. Stanford also continues to win and might be the most impressive one-loss team in the country.
The favorites to come out of this league before the season—Oregon and USC—continue to sputter. The Trojans coughed up a late lead at Notre Dame, while the Ducks barely won at Washington. The good news for this conference is that Arizona appears to be back now that Anu Solomon is healthy.
- Big Ten
The attention has been on Michigan State-Michigan this week, and that result—as shocking as it was—is the best thing for the Big Ten. As long as Sparty is unbeaten, the league has some leeway in terms of the playoff picture. Ohio State looks doggone good once again after smashing Penn State.
The third undefeated team, Iowa, could crash the party, since its remaining schedule is a certified joke. No one else seems to be a threat to either Ohio State or Michigan State at this point, so an unbeaten Hawkeye team is extremely important for this conference to be looked upon favorably.
- ACC
It’s good that both Clemson and Florida State are still unbeaten, because this league would be a wreck without that fact. The three teams that have yet to lose in the Coastal Division—Pittsburgh, Duke, and North Carolina—all lack the national cache to move the needle, although their respective records are good.
The problem is that no one else has any substance to back these teams at the top. Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech are having disastrous seasons, while N.C. State and Louisville have failed to seize their respective opportunities. The future in the middle of this conference is anything but bright at the present time.