Who are the biggest winners and losers from the release of the Week 6 college football rankings?
The college football season is one week older now and the college football rankings are beginning to mean more and more as far as the College Football Playoff is concerned. The top teams in the country are making themselves known as the top three or four teams have remained the same, relatively, for the past few weeks.
Louisville lost its first game of the season Saturday against the Clemson Tigers, but they’re still going to be a prominent figure when it comes to the playoff race. Lamar Jackson is just too good to let his team falter after a tough road loss against one of the best teams in the nation.
A handful of ranked teams lost on Saturday and that led to their omission from this week’s rankings. While the AP Poll won’t mean much come the first release of the first official College Football Playoff Rankings, this gives fans an idea of where their team will be slotted.
There were, however, some big winners and losers from the Week 6 AP Poll rankings. Some teams have dropped after their second or third losses of the year and that will likely mean the end to any hopes they had of a playoff run. Heck, some teams have already been eliminated, in theory, from their own conference title races.
Let’s take a look at the Week 6 AP Poll winners and losers from around the country.
Loser: Michigan State Spartans (No. 17 to unranked)
Michigan State is struggling. It’s rare to see this from a Mark Dantonio-coached team, but the Spartans are now 2-2 after losing to the Indiana Hoosiers on the road and many believe they’re in danger of struggling to get to a bowl game — OK, maybe those are just pessimistic Spartan fans talking.
Losing to Indiana is a big no-no for Michigan State and that happens to be the first defeat at the hands of the Hoosiers for the Spartans since 2006. Dantonio had never lost to this team, but his Spartans were simply out-played in the final quarter.
The Spartans took a 14-0 lead after a touchdown pass from Tyler O’Connor to Delton Williams in the the third, but a score by the Hoosiers right before the final frame changed the game a bit.
Indiana scored two more touchdowns in the fourth to take a 21-14 lead before Michigan State finally tied it up with a score in the final few seconds on 4th-and-goal. The momentum was still on Indiana’s side, however, as the Hoosiers escaped with an overtime win.
Too many mistakes, mentally, ruined the Spartans’ chances for back-to-back Big Ten titles and the second loss of the year has dropped MSU from the AP Poll for the first time in recent memory.