The No. 1 and 2 teams in the polls beat AP top-10 teams in Week 7, firming up their positions at the top of the rankings.
2016 college football rankings, Week 8: Bama and Ohio State still in charge, for now
Below are the AP and Coaches polls, plus a couple other interesting rankings.
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Alabama eviscerated Tennessee to win the rivalry yet again, sending a battered team into its bye week with a second consecutive loss. Ohio State battled back twice to beat Wisconsin in an overtime thriller, thanks to gutsy play calling at the end.
That sets up a huge Week 8 game between Bama and the likewise undefeated Texas A&M, which was off this weekend. The Buckeyes have a tough one as well, traveling to Penn State.
Big losers this week: Ole Miss, Miami, and Virginia Tech. The Rebels fell to Arkansas in another game that came down to a big fourth down play. The Canes got down early and couldn’t mount enough of a comeback to topple North Carolina. The Hokies got swamped by a Syracuse team that celebrated with the best postgame speech we’ve seen all year.
The initial Playoff rankings will be released on Nov. 1. For now, we’ll use the AP and Coaches polls as pretty good guesses as what the committee’s top 25 will look like. We’ll add those as soon as they’re available Sunday afternoon.
| AP (prev, if diff) | Coaches | S&P+ | Massey | |
| 1 | Alabama | Alabama | Michigan | Alabama |
| 2 | Ohio State | Ohio State | Alabama | Michigan |
| 3 | Michigan (4) | Clemson | Ohio State | Ohio State |
| 4 | Clemson (3) | Michigan | Clemson | Clemson |
| 5 | Washington | Washington | Louisville | Texas A&M |
| 6 | Texas A&M | Texas A&M | Washington | Washington |
| 7 | Louisville (10) | Louisville | LSU | Louisville |
| 8 | Nebraska | Baylor | Auburn | FSU |
| 9 | Baylor (11) | Nebraska | Florida | Tennessee |
| 10 | Wisconsin (8) | Wisconsin | Ole Miss | Wisconsin |
| 11 | Houston (13) | Houston (12) | Texas A&M | WMU |
| 12 | West Virginia (20) | Florida (14) | Oklahoma | West Virginia |
| 13 | FSU (14) | West Virginia (18) | Wisconsin | Nebraska |
| 14 | Boise State (15) | Boise State (15) | Baylor | Houston |
| 15 | Florida (18) | FSU (16) | FSU | Boise State |
| 16 | Oklahoma (19) | Oklahoma (20) | Virginia Tech | Auburn |
| 17 | Arkansas (22) | Arkansas (22) | Miami | Ole Miss |
| 18 | Tennessee (9) | Utah (21) | Houston | Oklahoma |
| 19 | Utah (21) | Tennessee (11) | Colorado | Stanford |
| 20 | WMU (24) | WMU (23) | Penn State | Florida |
| 21 | Auburn (23) | UNC (30) | Nebraska | WSU |
| 22 | UNC (28) | Ole Miss (13) | Boise State | Baylor |
| 23 | Ole Miss (12) | LSU (23) | USC | Miami |
| 24 | Navy (25) | Auburn (26) | West Virginia | Virginia Tech |
| 25 | LSU (29) | Navy (28) | NC State | Colorado |
The four rankings used here
The Associated Press Top 25: The longest-running and best-respected human poll. Didn’t have any official bearing on the latter years of the BCS, and doesn’t have any official bearing on the Playoff. Most outlets (including SB Nation) will use the AP’s rankings as the standard until the committee takes over in November, though. You can expect these rankings to drop early Sunday afternoon.
The USA Today Coaches Poll: Formerly part of the BCS, and now just a poll. It tends to react more cautiously than the AP’s. Though polling athletic departments in order to rank other athletic departments is dubious, we still want multiple human polls in here, and this is the other big one. These rankings typically come in Sundays around noon.
The Massey computer composite: A collection of dozens of ratings, all combined into one. We include the latest version as of publication. (It does also include the two human polls, but they can’t sway it all that much.)
Bill Connelly’s S&P+ ratings: SB Nation’s favored advanced stat, which arrives a bit later than the others. An important thing to keep in mind: for the first few weeks, it also factors in preseason projections. It’ll look pretty weird early on, but it’s proved to be a very strong predictor against the Vegas spread over the long term.
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