The AP Poll Is Grading Two Losses on a Helmet Curve

Oregon lost its second game of the season on Oct. 10, a 17-15 home loss to UCLA with seven turnovers, and the AP voters dropped the Ducks from No. 13 straight out of the poll.

Good. I mean that. Oregon was a two-loss team that didn’t look as good as its number, and the voters treated it that way.

Then this week’s poll came out.

Alabama lost its second game on Saturday, 26-10 at Tennessee, and it’s No. 13. Texas lost its second game in a row, at home to Florida, and it’s No. 19. If two losses were enough to throw Oregon out of the poll entirely, somebody please explain to me why two losses only cost Alabama seven spots.

Every two-loss team in the Top 25

Here’s the full list: Alabama (No. 13), LSU (No. 18), Texas (No. 19), Florida (No. 20) and Missouri (No. 22).

All five play in the SEC.

The two-loss teams from everywhere else are on the outside. Oklahoma State and Oregon, both 4-2, got more votes than any other unranked team this week, and Oklahoma State is the team that beat Oregon. James Madison is 7-0 and got fewer votes than either of them.

I’ll give the voters some slack in September. The samples are tiny, nobody knows anything yet, and a preseason ranking has to come from somewhere. But it’s the middle of October. Everybody has played six or seven games, and by now the poll is supposed to correct itself. For the brand names, it isn’t. SEC teams and the other helmet schools aren’t getting dropped far enough for their losses. (Oregon has a pretty famous helmet too, and it didn’t help. Apparently it works better with an SEC patch on it.)

Alabama

Alabama’s two losses came back to back, 20-17 at home to Georgia and then Saturday’s 26-10 loss in Knoxville. They’re the Tide’s first back-to-back regular-season losses since 2007. Those were good teams, and I’ll grant that. Oregon lost to good teams too. UCLA is 6-0 and No. 9, and Oklahoma State is the first team out.

Now look at what Alabama has left: Texas A&M, at LSU, at Vanderbilt, Chattanooga and Auburn. LSU is ranked, but I’ve already said I don’t think it should be, so I’m not losing sleep over that trip. Short of a major upset, I can’t pencil in another loss. If Alabama wins out, I’d bet it finishes the regular season around No. 4 or 5, as a two-loss team that never had to leave the top 15.

A two-loss team in the middle of October should be worried about itself. Alabama doesn’t have to be.

Texas

Texas is the one I really can’t wrap my head around. The Longhorns were No. 1 in the country going into the Oklahoma game on Oct. 10, and they lost it 27-24 on a field goal on the final play. On Saturday they blew a 14-point lead at home and lost 27-24 to a Florida team starting a quarterback in his first game. Two straight losses to unranked teams, and Texas is still No. 19.

The bigger problem is that this offense can’t move the ball. Texas is 12th in the SEC in total offense and 13th in rushing, and it leads the conference in three-and-out rate. Steve Sarkisian said Monday that he needs to see “a better version of Arch Manning.”

Yes, Texas beat Ohio State back in September. That was one good Saturday, and the schedule isn’t getting any easier. No. 7 Ole Miss comes to Austin this weekend, and Texas still has trips to Missouri, LSU and Texas A&M. A third loss is very much on the table.

The gauntlet

Everybody calls the SEC a gauntlet. But the scores this year have been all over the place, with teams that look great one weekend and terrible the next, and the poll keeps handing numbers to the big, recognizable schools anyway. Then those schools turn around and talk about all their ranked wins.

Ranked by whom?

Florida is my exhibit. On Sept. 26 it beat No. 4 Ole Miss 52-28, and the voters moved it from No. 21 to No. 8 in a week. Then it lost 45-17 at Missouri and 38-19 to South Carolina and fell out of the poll. On Saturday it won in Austin, and now it’s back at No. 20. So which one is Florida? It beat a good Ole Miss team. It also laid two complete duds. Most weeks it looks like a middle-of-the-pack SEC team.

You can beat the No. 1 team in the country without being anywhere close to the best team in the country. Auburn did it on Saturday, in Athens, as a three-score underdog. Nobody thinks Auburn is No. 1, and the voters didn’t even rank the Tigers, which was the right call. That was one great weekend. The name of the game is consistency. A team that’s the best in the country every once in a while and middle of the pack the rest of the time doesn’t belong in the top 10, and I’m not sure it belongs in the top 25.

Missouri is the same story from the other direction. It climbed to No. 13 by beating Florida and Texas A&M, lost 31-3 at Ole Miss on Saturday, and it’s still No. 22. When teams like that keep their numbers, every SEC team that beats them gets to call it a ranked win, and the résumés pad themselves. For what it’s worth, the only win on Alabama’s résumé over a team in this week’s poll came at Kentucky in September.

Why it bugs me

I still think college football has the hardest regular season in sports. It was even harder before the playoff showed up in 2014, when one bad Saturday could end your year, but every week still matters more here than in any other sport. The poll is supposed to reflect that. Right now it’s softening the landing for the brand names.

That doesn’t mean two losses should be a death sentence. A two-loss team can absolutely get into a 12-team playoff, and Texas and Alabama should both be able to work their way back in. Win your games and climb. My problem is that they get to start the climb from the top 20, and Oregon starts from the parking lot.

I get it. There’s been a ton of chaos, and college football chaos is awesome. Five of the top seven teams lost on Saturday, which had never happened before. But chaos is exactly when the poll needs to be honest. There are teams with more deserving résumés sitting behind teams whose best wins came against opponents I’m not convinced should be ranked at all.

That’s just what it looks like to me.

Oregon got the right treatment. Give it to everybody.