College Football Rankings: The Winners And Losers Of The Week 11 Polls

The best part of the college football polls every week is the discussion they bring. With that in mind, a rundown of the winners and losers from this week’s rankings.

Oregon, Auburn, TCU, and Boise State are the winners of a clear conscience thanks to this week’s polls. Those four unbeatens are likely locked into that order for the rest of the season, provided they keep winning.

Stanford is also a big winner, rocketing up to the top nine in both polls thanks to a rout of Arizona and well-timed losses by a few schools that were ahead of the Cardinal last week. This solidifies Stanford’s bid to become the second Pac-10 team to earn a BCS berth this year, and though the Rose Bowl is a near-impossibility, Andrew Luck’s bunch should be playing on a big stage in January.

This week’s polls also make it look more and more certain that Wisconsin will get to a Rose Bowl for the first time since 2000.

And congratulations to Central Florida, which is ranked for the first time in school history. The once-Golden Knights have shed that colorful adjective — they’re just the Knights now — and have rebranded a couple of times since the Daunte Culpepper Era, but still haven’t managed to shake the directional label that the school has grown to hate. Oh, well. You’re ranked, UCF fans!

Sorry, Utah: your one shot at being more than TCU and Boise State’s little brother evaporated about as quickly as any pretense of competition did in Salt Lake City on Saturday.

This week’s polls are especially bad for the legions of SEC haters nationwide. In what is still a down year for the conference, there are seven ranked SEC teams, three SEC teams in BCS contention, and one team that appears likely to make it to the BCS National Championship Game. Other conferences wish they could have off years like this.

Also, sadly my eternal war against the coaches poll is also a losing effort this week. Sure, Iowa three spots behind Michigan State still defies most things humans would call logic. But there’s nothing other than that that stands out as particularly egregious in the Week 11 USA Today poll, so I suppose a cease-fire is in effect.