Fan Pulse Top 25

LSU maintains the top spot. Ohio State is lurking.

By Drew Schneider Nov 27, 2019, 2:12pm EST

NCAA Football: Louisiana State at Mississippi

National Poll

1-4

There are no changes in the top 4 from last week. The CFP committee decided to bump up Ohio State to 1 and drop LSU to 2, but the SB Nation voters where having none of that capricious nonsense.

Clemson it stuck at 3, and will most likely remain there unless LSU or Ohio State get knocked off. The Bayou Bengals and Buckeyes will be lobbying hard for the top spot, because neither want the undefeated, defending National Champions in the Semi-Final.

The 4th spot remained the same, with Georgia maintaining their grip on the top 4 after boring Texas A&M to death in Athens. The Bulldogs offense is not good, but the defense is stout. I’m not sure they’re the 4th best team, because I don’t think they can keep up with an offense like Oklahoma, but there are perks to playing in the SEC. Getting the benefit of the doubt for a bad offense appears to be one of those perks.

5-10

Alabama stays at 5 because they’ve got an A on the side of their helmet. Without Tua, I just don’t see them as a threat. Their run game has been marginal all season and the defense has been porous. Their skill players are still some of the best in college football, but can Mac Jones utilize them? We’ll find out Saturday when they face a solid Auburn defense.

Out of every team in this section, Oklahoma, in my opinion, is the most dangerous. Give me an experienced quarterback running an explosive offense over Georgia and Bama all day, every day. If the defense is as improved as they have looked (on occasion) this year, the Sooners could end up in the coveted 4th spot with a Big12 title.

Utah is a more complete team than Alabama, and by all rights, should either be 5th or 6th in this poll, but at the same time, I wouldn’t put any money on Utah beating Alabama. I think the Pac-12 gets left out again this year, but Utah will have a solid case to make as a 1 loss conference champ. Out of all the teams, chaos helps them the most.

The 8 through 10 spots don’t interest me that much. Baylor, I suppose, could knock of Oklahoma, but they’re not getting into the top 4. I’m still not sold on Minnesota or Florida being elite teams, and would take several teams from the 11-20 rankings straight up over them on a neutral field.

11-20

Penn State is not the 11th best team in the country. That OSU game was only close because the Buckeyes went brain dead for 5 minutes in the quarter. I don’t think James Franklin is a good coach, and I don’t trust the Penn State offense at all.

Memphis is an interesting team. I would take the Tigers and their explosive offense over Minnesota, Florida, and Penn State, mainly because I’m not sure any of those teams (considering Minnesota’s current injury situation) could score enough points to beat them.

The rest of the teams in this area are tasters choice. All are flawed in one way or another. I swore I would never do this, but I kind of think Michigan might be a dangerous team at 18. No, I don’t think they’ll beat O.S.U. but if they’ve been hot recently and Patterson has looked like the quarterback we were all promised over the last few games (Juan may or may not have paid me 5 bucks to say this).

21-25

Iowa is the king of this section of the poll. They are the best at being kind-of-good.

Virginia Tech has turned what looked like a disastrous season around, and if they take care of Virginia on Saturday, Clemson might have a live challenge in the ACC Championship.