Every Friday, the Friday Five will rank something in the world of college football -- anything and everything from the logical to the illogical. This week, we rank the five most exciting teams of the first half of the 2016 college football season.

One of the great things about college football is the variety it offers. There are 128 teams on the FBS level, and it seems like there are 128 different styles of play as well, as each team seems to have its own identity.

It just keeps things interesting for college football fans.

Let's face facts here. This is a sport where only four of the 128 teams that are playing -- a whopping 3.125 percent -- will get a chance to play for a title in the College Football Playoff. Compare that to the NFL where 37.5 percent of the league makes the playoffs or MLB (33.3 percent), NBA and NHL (53.3 percent each). Hell, sometimes in the NFL and NBA, you don't even have to have a winning record to qualify for the playoffs.

College football teams aren't afforded such chances, and yet, in spite of the fact that so many teams are eliminated from title contention before the end of the first month, we never ignore them. It's because you don't have to be contending for a national championship to be a fun team to watch. Hell, you don't even necessarily have to be a good team to be an exciting one.

So for this week's Friday Five, as we reach the mid-point of the college football season, I've decided to try and figure out which teams are the five most exciting teams from the first half of the season. I didn't have any set criteria for the list other than "they're fun to watch." So it's all very much subjective, but while there were a whole bunch of teams under consideration, these are the five that I've found to be the most entertaining for a host of different reasons this year.

5. Alabama: While Alabama has been very good for a while now, it's never really been an "exciting" team to me. More often than not, it's been a team that's won games in blowout fashion, or just slowly bludgeoned its opponent to death. That's certainly fun in its own way, but you were never really turning on an Alabama game for a good time. That's changed a bit this year.

Alabama is still really good, and it can still blow you out or just bludgeon you, but it does so in a variety of different ways this year. With Jalen Hurts at quarterback, and yes, Lane Kiffin running the offense, there's an aspect of the Tide offense that hasn't really existed before. Last year, it was just "let's give Derrick Henry the ball a million times until you break," while this year the mobile quarterback just adds a new dimension. Oh, and there's also the fact that Alabama's defense and special teams are more potent than some other offenses. The Tide has scored 11 non-offensive touchdowns through seven games, which is more than South Carolina has all season (nine). As a result it's just a lot more fun to watch Alabama destroy people this year.

4. California: The Golden Bears are not what you'd consider a good team. At 3-3, they're not only eliminated from any title consideration, but they're not even in the hunt for a division title at this point. None of that matters, though, because they just have this habit of playing in exciting games.

It's a byproduct of being a team that can score a lot of points, but also give up just as many.

Through six games, there has been an average of 82.33 points scored in each Cal game this season. Seriously, the lowest-scoring game Cal has played in this year was a 28-23 affair with Utah, which the Bears won. It's other five games have featured an average of 88.6 points per game, and the largest margin of victory by any team in a game with Cal this season has been 20. That was Cal's 51-31 win over Hawaii in Australia to start the season. In the last five games, the average deficit between Cal and its opponent has been six points, with no game featuring a margin greater than 10.

So if you're just looking for a good time, turn on a Cal game. There's going to be a ton of points, and it's going to be close in the fourth quarter.

3. Louisville: This is basically The Lamar Jackson Award for Louisville, because while the Cardinals are actually a very good team on both sides of the ball, I don't think they land on this list without Lamar. He's worth the price of admission on his own.

Seriously, one of the most exciting plays I've seen this season was an incomplete pass by Jackson. It came late in Louisville's loss to Clemson, when the Cardinals were trailing. Jackson was pressured in the pocket as he dropped back to pass, broke a few tackles, spun around a few times to escape even more pressure, and then threw an incomplete pass. Still, it wasn't the pass that mattered, it was everything he did before it that typified how dynamic a player he is.

He's so electric that you don't even care that Louisville's five wins have come by an average of 34.8 points per game. It can be up 45 points in the second quarter, but as long as Lamar Jackson is still in the game and has the ball in his hands, you want to keep watching.

2. BYU: While BYU may have to deal with having its advances rebuffed by the Big 12 this week, it can at least take solace in the fact it has a football team that's a lot of fun to watch. Through the halfway point of the season, the Cougars are only 4-4, but it's been a heart rate raising 4-4, as this is a team that does not believe in making it easy.

BYU's biggest win this season came by 17 points on the road against Michigan State a couple of weeks ago, and this was an anomaly not just because the outcome came as a surprise, but because it was a three-score game. That just doesn't happen in BYU games this year. In its other seven games, the final outcome has not been decided by more than seven points in any of them. In fact, the average margin of victory in BYU's other six games has been 3.2 points. The most exciting of which was a 55-53 thriller against Toledo, which BYU won on a 19-yard field goal in a game that saw 66 points scored in the second half.

So when you combine the fact that BYU plays so many close games, and does it against quality competition -- six of BYU's eight games have been against Power Five schools, with a seventh against Boise State -- it's just a team you want to have on your television set more often than not.

1. Tennessee: While I considered a lot of teams for this list, there was never much of a question which team I was going to put at No. 1. Sure, the 49-10 loss to Alabama last week leaves a bit of a sour taste in your mouth when Tennessee is involved, but we can't look past everything that happened in the weeks before it.

Tennessee is a team that combines talent with a knack for performing miracles.

Here's a quick recap of the season so far...

The Vols opened the season by struggling for three quarters against Appalachian State before doing just enough in the fourth quarter to squeeze by with a 20-13 win. They followed that up by beating Virginia Tech in the middle of a dang race track the following week. After that, they slept-walked a bit past Ohio, which at the very least kept the game interesting. Then things got really real as the Vols came back from a 21-0 deficit to beat Florida and end an 11-game losing streak against their hated rival. As if that wasn't enough, the next week the Vols gave up a 47-yard touchdown pass with 10 seconds left against Georgia, and when all hope was lost, they just threw a 43-yard Hail Mary of their own to pull out the stunning victory.

Not finished yet, the Vols then found a way to overcome yet another 21-point deficit and seven turnovers against Texas A&M to force overtime, before finally falling short in the second overtime.

So, yeah, the Vols are a team with bi-polar disorder that refuses to take its meds, which may not be a good thing for it, but it's fantastic entertainment for you.

Honorable Mention: Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, Pitt, Texas