College Football: FBS Top 128 Power Rankings – SEC West Continues to Dominate Week 7 Rankings

Close SEC contests are creating little separation in the Top 128 adjusted margin of victory. (Troy Taormina/USA Today Sports)

The past couple of weeks have helped delineate the SEC West pecking order, as the two Mississippi schools have supplanted the two Alabama schools as the class of the division. What the past fortnight has not done, however, is create much separation in the adjusted margin of victory for each of these teams. As a result, the logjam of SEC West schools continues to clog up the top spots in the Top 128 midway through the 2014 season.

This is a result of several factors. First, the high Sagarin ranking for all of these teams means that the vanquished are receiving little punishment for even double-digit losses. For example, Auburn’s 15-point road loss at Mississippi State calculates to less than a one-point loss after the adjustment for opponent strength. As a result, six of the top 14 teams in this week’s Top 128 Power Rankings are SEC West schools. (And Arkansas, ranked 22nd this week, rounds out the division.)

It does make for some interesting positioning in the rankings, however. Auburn remains five spots ahead of the team that beat the Tigers. And those Bulldogs, ranked atop both the AP and coaches polls after defeating a top-10 school for the third straight week, are stuck behind three schools that have already sustained defeats thanks to a number of close finishes.

Only six undefeated teams remain after yet another week of attrition, and behind them a group of 25 squads have endured just one defeat. With every team within a game in either direction of the halfway point of their seasons, the hierarchy is starting to solidify and it will increasingly require blowout upsets to create seismic shifts in the rankings.

All one can hope for at this point is more chaos. The SEC’s only chance of producing a 13-0 conference champion depends on the sustained success of the two contenders from the Magnolia State. Only Baylor — the one team that trumps all of Dixie’s finest in adjusted margin of victory despite a last-gasp three-point win at home over TCU — holds hope for the Big 12, and defending national champ Florida State is the last best hope for the ACC. USC eliminated its conference from that conversation with a victory over previously-unbeaten Arizona, while the Big Ten has been out of the discussion for weeks.

Here are some other quick thoughts after sifting through the data through Week 7:

• Hovering in the wings, waiting to see what happens to the Power Five schools, is Marshall. Fifth in this week’s Top 128 and sixth in per-game adjusted margin, the Thundering Herd have yet to score fewer than six touchdowns in any contest. Though they have been playing one of the weakest schedules of any team in the FBS ranks, which reduces the impact of any individual victory, Marshall is nevertheless dominating the competition on its schedule to an extent that compares favorably to more heralded programs. While it might require every one of the Power Five conference champions to have at least two losses, the Herd are at least in position to force the selection committee’s hand should chaos proliferate.
• The Big Ten was left for dead after the first few weeks of the season, yet a trio of contenders — Ohio State, Nebraska, and Michigan State — are hovering in ninth, 10th, and 11th respectively in aggregate margin. Only the SEC has more teams in the top 12 of the power rankings, belying the myth of the Big Ten’s demise in 2014. While it would require the Buckeyes, Cornhuskers, or Spartans to run out the rest of the schedule, there are still multiple contenders for the College Football Playoff among the recently-expanded conference.
• The one league from among the Power Five conferences whose position among the CFP field is looking increasingly tenuous is the Pac-12. Arizona’s loss at home to USC eliminated the last undefeated team from the conference, and despite having a sextet of one-loss schools (and four more who have endured only two defeats) this has translated into mediocrity rather than depth as far as the adjusted margin is concerned. Oregon is the top-ranked team in 17th, and Washington is the only other team from the league in the top 25.
• No more than five undefeated teams will remain after mid-October, due to the fact that Notre Dame heads to Tallahassee to take on Florida State next Satuday. Baylor will take its 6-0 mark to Morgantown for a tricky game against 4-2 West Virginia; Ole Miss welcomes 3-3 Tennessee to Oxford; and Marshall takes on FIU in Miami. Only Mississippi State, idle next weekend ahead of a trip to Kentucky, is guaranteed to be unbeaten after the Week 8 slate of games.
• Beyond the unbeaten teams, there are five other games that will serve as virtual elimination games between one-loss teams. The Pac-12, Big 12, and Big Ten will see their ranks of contenders winnowed down in the following Week 8 showdowns:
  • Utah (4-1) at Oregon State (4-1)
  • Kansas State (4-1) at Oklahoma (5-1)
  • Rutgers (5-1) at Ohio State (4-1)
  • Oklahoma State (5-1) at TCU (4-1)
  • Washington (5-1) at Oregon (5-1)

(The weekly FBS Top 128 is calculated based on a formula described in Week 1. To review the methodology behind the adjusted aggregate score, read the full explanation here. To gain a better understanding about adjustments to the formula made in Week 3, click here. Go to the next page for adjusted margin of victory per game.)

FBS Top 128 - 2014 Week 7