College football Week 10: 5 teams on upset alert

MIAMI GARDENS, FL - OCTOBER 21: Malik Rosier #12 of the Miami Hurricanes calls a play during a game against the Syracuse Orange at Sun Life Stadium on October 21, 2017 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
MIAMI GARDENS, FL - OCTOBER 21: Malik Rosier #12 of the Miami Hurricanes calls a play during a game against the Syracuse Orange at Sun Life Stadium on October 21, 2017 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
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The first playoff rankings are out and the stakes have never been higher, but which college football teams are on upset alert heading into Week 10?

It’d be foolish to say that every week and month of the college football season doesn’t matter. You can’t mess around and lose easily winnable games early in the season. With that being said, it’d also be unwise to not note that the end of the season is perhaps the most crucial point of a given campaign. And now that the initial College Football Playoff rankings have been announced, that’s very much the case.

With the selection committee now debating each week about which teams are deserving of competing for a National Championship, the teams in the running can’t afford any missteps. Slipping up could cost a squad that opportunity. After all, the committee is only human and these things matter. Put simply, the last month of the season is a massively important proving ground.

Thus, avoiding upsets is absolutely vital for teams in this regard. They can’t overlook any opponent, and must step up when a challenge presents itself. That’s what the Oklahoma Sooners and Oklahoma State Cowboys have to do as they meet for Bedlam this week. However, the No. 5 ranked Sooners aren’t on upset alert, even though they could be beaten by the 11th ranked team. Two one-loss rivals facing off hardly constitutes an upset.

With that being said, there are other teams in college football that do have to worry about actual upsets. Let’s take a look at five such squads facing just that in Week 10 of the 2017 season.

5. Penn State Nittany Lions

Rank: 7, Opponent: at (24) Michigan State

One thing that I’ve never been a fan of in terms of trying to pinpoint potential upsets is taking teams that are coming off of a big loss. Though there are plenty of analytical things that point to this not being the case, motivation and momentum matter. And a team with a leader like head coach James Franklin is going to come out and bring everything they have to East Lansing for this matchup with the Michigan State Spartans.

The problem with that, though, is that Sparty is actually a pretty bad matchup for the Nittany Lions. When you look at the way that Ohio State Buckeyes were able to come back against Penn State and beat them last week, many people are going to point to the performance of J.T. Barrett. While his performance was key, even more critical was the way that the defense played. They feasted on a sneaky bad offensive line for the Nittany Lions and left the offense looking anemic.

Michigan State has a defense that is a high enough caliber to be able to do that from start-to-finish on Saturday. They have the fourth-best rushing defense in the country, which has to be bad news for Saquon Barkley and the Nittany Lions offense. When you factor all of that in and the fact that this is a crucial game on the road for Penn State, it seems like beating the Spartans might be an exceptionally tough task. And in the end, they could well end up with back-to-back losses.

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