Fresh off of a 57 to 3 destruction of the San Jose Spartans, The Stanford Cardinal open the first week of AP college football rankings ranked 7th best in the country.
Ahead of the 2010 Pac-10 Champion Cardinal are Oklahoma, Alabama, Oregon, LSU, Boise State, and Florida State. But the question now becomes, at least from this corner, “Is Stanford really better than its 7th ranking?”
This is the fourth straight opening day win for The Cardinal, which looks belly-achingly like the team that smashed Cal in the 2010 Big Game, and posting a score that I will not repeat here at this specific time (Sorry, Gary Tyrrell!)
At this point, how does Oregon lose to LSU 40 to 27, and still remain ahead of them – yes, in front of LSU – in the college football rankings? How does Oregon not fall?
That Stanford did not do what SB Nation’s Avinash Kunnath expected The Cardinal to – move ahead of Oregon – is just plain shocking. Given what Kunnath wrote, the AP college football rankings poll is a real head-scratcher:
The Oregon Ducks, beset by penalties and turnovers and injuries, struggled mightily in their season opener against the LSU Tigers, and are likely to drop at least several spots. It’d be hard to see them staying ahead of Stanford after their performance, even if their loss came against a top 3 opponent. Oregon will need to drop four or five spots to move past Stanford, which is well within the realm of reason.
Didn’t happen.
Stay tuned.
See: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/ncaa/polls/ap/
UPDATE: the page above is brand new, but has old rankings, coupled with the current won-loss record for the 2011 season, just one game old. The release of the page, coupled with search patterns, brought “college football rankings” to number two in search trends. The revised poll will be released tomorrow.