Oct 6, 2012; Columbia, SC, USA; South Carolina Gamecocks players celebrate with fans following their win over the Georgia Bulldogs at Williams-Brice Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Blake-US PRESSWIRE
Forgive your editor for not making this one of the earliest top 25 polls released today, he may or may not have been recovering this morning from a festive night Saturday.
Without further adieu, here is Garnet and Cocky’s top 25:
25. Iowa State It was between the Cyclones and NC State after both teams pulled big upsets Saturday. The choice was easy though; Iowa State has one loss and the Wolf Pack has two.
24. Duke Yes, Duke. It’s early, but the Blue Devils are undefeated in conference play, and their only loss on the year has come at the hands of Stanford. We’ll see what this team is really made of in the ACC next week when it takes on a reeling Virginia Tech squad.
23. Cincinnati The Bearcats are 4-0 and 1-0 in Big East play. They only have one good win, over Virginia Tech, but since they only play two ranked teams the rest of the year, the could be a 10 win team at worst.
22. Ohio The Bobcats won a close one over Buffalo Saturday, but they’re still undefeated and they’ll be undefeated when the season is over.
21. Stanford After a loss to Washington, the Cardinal nearly lost to Arizona. Things don’t get any easier next week; Stanford heads to South Bend Indiana to face Notre Dame.
20. Florida State After a huge win over Clemson, Florida State crapped the bed against NC State. There’s no excuse for a loss like that.
19. Texas A&M The Aggies went into a hostile environment and barely got by Ole Miss Saturday. But they got by them, and the Aggies could be on their way to a very, very good season.
18. Mississippi State After an early season schedule against inferior opponents, the Bulldogs are about to embark on a tough stretch of football. Next week they get Tennessee, then after a should-be-win over Middle Tennessee they play Alabama, A&M, and LSU.
17. Rutgers Who has the fifth best scoring defense in the country? Yes. Rutgers. They just smashed Connecticut 19-3 and the only team to score more than 13 points on them is Arkansas.
16. Southern California The Trojans shook off a bad start against Utah to come from behind and beat them 38-28. They should keep climbing the polls until they face Oregon in a few weeks.
15. Louisville The Big East might be seriously depleted, but Louisville doesn’t care. They’re slowly and quietly turning into a team that could shock some one in the BCS Bowl game.
14. Georgia After scoring like crazy on every team they played this year, Georgia was shut down by the Gamecocks. They’ve got one tough game left the rest of the year, though, so the loss doesn’t set them back too far. If they lose more than two games this season it’ll be a surprise.
13. LSUThe Tigers have problems on offense, and those problems looked like a disaster against the talented defense of Florida. Things won’t get any easier for LSU’s offense, because they have to face a Gamecocks defense next week that’s giving up just 10 points a game this year.
12. Texas In my eyes, a loss that close to West Virginia doesn’t drop them down the rankings much. Next week when they play Oklahoma we’ll see how resilient these Longhorns are.
11. Clemson I hate having them this close to the top 10, especially since they haven’t beaten a team of note this year. But, their only loss was to FSU, who at the time was a top 10 squad.
10. Oklahoma Next weekend matchup with the Longhorns will go a long way in telling us about the Big 12’s traditional two power houses. After a 41-20 win over Texas Tech, the Sooners head into the big rivalry game with a full head of steam.
9. Oregon State It wasn’t too long ago I was the first person I saw ranking these guys in the top 25. Boy what a few weeks can do for a team.
8. Ohio State The best team in the Big 10 just beat Nebraska 63-38. The best team in the Big 10 can’t play for the conference’s championship or get to a bowl game. It’s a sad, sad year for the mighty B1G.
7. Notre Dame The Fighting Irish just keep winning. Their defense is one of the best in the nation and it proved that against Miami, holding the Hurricanes to three points in a 38 point obliteration of The U.
6. Kansas State In a game against a vastly inferior Kansas team, the Wildcats did what they had to do in a big way. They beat the Jayhawks 56-16.
5. West Virginia Their offense was great again, and their defense was nonexistent again in a 48-45 win over Texas.
4. Florida The Gators defense has proven to be a terrifying force this year. It just won the Gators the game against LSU in The Swamp, Saturday.
3. South Carolina After shutting down Georgia’s two phenom freshmen running backs, making Aaron Murray look like Tony Romo against the Chicago Bears and turning in an all-around dominant performance against the Georgia Bulldogs, South Carolina proved to the nation the Gamecocks are for real this year.
2. Oregon Another week, another blowout. Oregon’s offense just keeps on scoring and their defense keeps doing enough to keep games from getting close.
1. Alabama The Crimson Tide got a week off and they’ll pretty much have another one next weekend when they face Missouri.