Counting Down Title Contenders

Teams eliminated: Boise State, Cal, Georgia Tech, Michigan (not enough tough games on the schedule to overcome their loss, they fell a LONG way).

Next week, or the week after, I will rank these teams and divide them into appropriate categories, but I thought I'd wait until the list shrinks a little more before putting too much time into the list.  I'd be shocked if we didn't lose 4 more teams this week, with potential to be down below 15 by the end of September.

I realize there are serious stretches still on the list, but until those teams lose, they still have a chance.  I included every team that had any chance to go undefeated that would be in serious discussions to play for the title if undefeated, and, in some cases, with one loss.  It was in no way a prediction of how anyone would do.  I just wanted to include anyone that had any realistic chance at an undefeated season.  Personally, I think it comes down to SEC Champ vs. whoever has the undefeated conference champion between Pac 12, Big XII, and Big Ten.

My initial thoughts would be Bama vs. OU, in case anyone wanted a prediction.  LSU travels to Florida and Arkansas but hosts Alabama and South Carolina.  1 loss should be fine for them as long as they beat Alabama and the loss is on the road.  However, Bama will only play three ranked teams all season, including Michigan, so they can pretty much gear up for LSU once they take care of Arkansas next weekend.  For all the talk of how tough the SEC is week in and week out, Bama shows how wrong that is.  In the non-conference, they got an overrated Michigan (not in hindsight, I've told many of you I was cheering for Bama to expose Michigan as the fraud that they are), followed by games against Western Kentucky, Florida Atlantic, and Western Carolina (FCS).  Playing at Arkansas is very difficult, no question.  Beyond that: Ole Miss, at Mizzou, at Tennessee, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, and Auburn.  No top ten team would cower at the week-in and week-out of that schedule.  For those counting, yes, that's only four road games, all forced by the SEC in conference play.

Oklahoma has a TOUGH Big XII slate.  I put OU's schedule up against LSU's and say they're pretty darn even.  The toughest four games are pretty even, with a slight edge to LSU simply b/c there's only one Alabama in the country, and OU doesn't play them.  However, OU's 5th and 6th games are stronger in my opinion.  Certainly OU's road is much tougher than Bama's: ND will beat Michigan and OU will destroy ND, using the incompatible-to-this-situation transitive property, Bama blew out a nobody team last weekend.  Oregon is probably better than USC, but the Ducks have to play that regular season game on the road, and probably the Pac 12 Championship game in LA as well.  However, I don't trust either team/coach to beat the other twice.

Alabama
Arkansas
BYU
Clemson
Florida (at Texas A&M)
Florida State
Georgia (at Missouri, who should be on this list, I suppose)
Kansas State (hosting Miami in an elimination game!)
LSU (hosting UW)
Miami (at Kansas State)
Michigan State
Nebraska (at UCLA)
Notre Dame
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State (at Arizona)
Oregon
South Carolina
Stanford
TCU
Texas
USC
Utah (at Utah State Friday night on ESPN2)
Virginia Tech
Washington (at LSU)
West Virginia
Wisconsin (at Oregon State)