Clemson takes a tumble Perhaps the biggest story this past week was the scare former #1 Clemson received courtesy of Mack Brown’s UNC Tarheels. In the fourth quarter, freshman Tarheels quarterback Sam Howell led a scoring drive converting two third downs and two fourth downs to put the ball in the end zone making the score 21 – 20 with just over a minute left in the game. Instead of kicking the extra point to take the game into overtime, Brown decided to play for the win and go for two. The Tigers, however, were ready for the triple option the Tarheels dialed up and stuffed Howell at the line of scrimmage to preserve the victory. It was the very definition of an “ugly win.” As a result, the Tigers fell from the #1 spot in both the AP and MaxDiff Polls, and rightfully so, as the Tigers have not looked like the best team in the country so far this season. Clemson descended one spot in the AP to #2, but fans think they should have fallen even further as Clemson fell all the way to #6 in the MaxDiff Poll, which makes Clemson one of this week’s most overrated teams in the AP according to fans. I think this is reasonable considering the wholesale beatings Alabama, Ohio State, and Oklahoma have delivered to their unranked opponents, while LSU and Georgia have big victories over Texas and Notre Dame, respectively. Clemson has an off week this weekend to get its act together before hosting division rival Florida State in Death Valley on October 12.

A crowd at the top In last week’s poll, I mentioned that there was a clear consensus that seven contenders in Tiers I and II had separated themselves from the pack. That situation has not changed. However, the ordering of the seven at the top of the MaxDiff Poll is not any more clear than it was this time last week. In fact, it may be even muddier. Because of Clemson’s fall, I expected Alabama to be the sole member of Tier I. However, I was surprised to see that Alabama’s MaxDiff score was not significantly greater than the #2 team – the Ohio State Buckeyes – who in turn did not achieve a MaxDiff score significantly greater than Oklahoma or Georgia. In other words, fans agree that there are seven top teams, but they do not agree on how to order them. As a result, I combined Tiers I and II this week into one tier. Luckily, each of these seven contenders is still approaching the meat of their conference schedules. That means we’ll really get to see what these teams are made of in the month of October. This will be a deciding month in terms of separating the contenders from the pretenders.

Auburn is still the wild card Auburn was the wild card in last week’s MaxDiff Poll, and that trend continues this week. However, Auburn inched closer to the Contender Tier this week after delivering a beating to Mississippi State. Regardless, Auburn still falls slightly below the upper tiers despite the fact that they have arguably the most impressive resume in the country. Auburn has yet another opportunity to earn fans’ respect this weekend as it travels to Gainesville, Florida to take on the Florida Gators with ESPN College GameDay in attendance. While Vegas currently favors the Tigers by a field goal, fans in this research predicted a 28 – 20 Auburn victory.

Tier IV isn’t out of it The three member of Tier III – Notre Dame, Penn State, and Texas – are still in the hunt. Notre Dame and Texas fall shy of the upper tiers due to quality losses earlier this season to top tier teams in Georgia and LSU, respectively. Despite taking losses in these games, the Irish and Longhorns looked more competitive than the public was expecting. Winning out would put them right back in the thick of The Playoff conversation (especially Texas). Penn State on the other hand, had far less preseason hype than any of the teams ranked above them in both the MaxDiff and AP Polls, but have looked pretty solid so far. In fact, the Nittany Lions’ most impressive win to date came this past Friday night as they rolled into College Park, Maryland and delivered a 59 – 0 shellacking to the Terrapins. Penn State was only a 6-point favorite in this game, perhaps due in part to the fact that first-year starting QB Sean Clifford was facing his first in-conference road test. Clifford more than rose to the challenge. The redshirt sophomore signal caller completed his first eight passes for 166 yards and two touchdowns as things got really ugly really quickly for the Terrapins. Clifford continued to carve up the Terrapin defense, completing 26 of 31 pass attempts for 398 yards and three touchdowns. After an uninspiring performance against Pitt in Week 3, Clifford’s performance had to be reassuring to the Penn State faithful. Maybe there is life after Trace McSorley. It is going to take more than one blowout before fans buy in on Penn State as a contender, but the Nittany Lions have ample opportunities this month with October tilts versus three ranked teams in Iowa, Michigan, and Michigan State. If Penn State gets past those three games unscathed, it is likely that they will earn contender status before a showdown with the top tier Ohio State Buckeyes on November 23.

Fans disrespect Arizona State Arizona State’s relatively low ranking was one of the more puzzling aspects of this week’s results. The Sun Devils clocked in at #27 in the MaxDiff Poll versus #20 in the AP, making them one of this week’s most overrated teams in the AP in the minds of fans. The Sun Devils are coming off of a Friday night road win over Cal, who were perplexingly ranked one spot ahead Arizona State in this week’s MaxDiff Poll despite both teams having a 3 – 1 record. One explanation that may account for this is the fact that when the Sun Devils win, they tend to win ugly. Arizona State has scored a pair of road victories this season over ranked opponents, but both were repelling rock fights, particularly the 10 – 7 win over Michigan State, which was straight up painful to watch. Regardless, fans are either forgetting about that game or they think it was an aberration because Michigan State was actually voted as this week’s most underrated team in the AP. The Sun Devils have a chance to earn fans’ respect in the next couple of weeks as they face Washington State and Utah. Regardless of who wins, expect the Utah game to be another ugly rock fight.