AP Top 25 College Football Rankings Week 2: Big Ten Pummeled, Oregon and USC Making Pac-12 Look Good
ByThe Oregon Ducks (2) traded ranks with the Alabama Crimson Tide (3), but the College Football Playoff picture remained the same.
As expected after their win over Citadel, the Florida State Seminoles (1) held the top spot after week two in the Associated Press' Top 25 College Football rankings. The rest of the top six went unchanged, with the Georgia Bulldogs (6) getting the week off and the Oklahoma Sooners (4) and Auburn Tigers (5) both recording wins.
The Texas A&M Aggies (7) moved up two more places - and even received two first-palce votes - after drubbing Lamar 73-3. Only staying in long enough to attempt 26 passes, Kenny Hill threw four touchdown strikes and recorded a 96.9 QBR.
The Baylor Bears (8) and LSU Tigers (10) moved up two places as well, likely to accommodate for the Michigan State Spartans' (13) drop after losing to Oregon. Despite leading the Ducks 24-18 at the half, the Spartans were outscored 28-3 in the second, with Marcus Mariota and the Ducks' offense making their opposition's defense look uncharacteristically weak.
Of any top 10 team, however, no one made a more significant jump than the USC Trojans (9), rising five places after beating the Stanford Cardinal (15). The game went into the fourth quarter tied at 10, when USC's kicker Andre Heidari nailed a 53-yard field goal, the longest of his career.
The Ohio State Buckeyes (22) had the largest slip, falling 14 places after losing to then-unranked Virginia Tech Hokies (16), who leapt nine places to get into the rankings. Ohio State was visibly lost without Braxton Miller, as their replacement QB, J.T. Barrett, threw three interceptions and completes nine passes in 29 attempts.
Also newly added to the rankings were the BYU Cougars (25), leaving Nebraska and North Carolina out. All in all, it was a bad week for the Big Ten.