Joey McGuire and the Texas Tech REd Raiders, at 10-1 on the season, are clearly among the best teams in the country. And it looks like the computers that helped calculate out the latest ESPN’s Football Power Index college football rankings think pretty highly of the Red Raiders right now.
Texas Tech is sitting at No. 8, pretty comfortably in the top 10.
Now, I think the Red Raiders should probably be ranked a little higher. It’s weird seeing the Utah Utes, Alabama Crimson Tide, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish ranked ahead of Texas Tech right now (but I suspect the folks over in Oxford, Mississippi have similar thoughts about some of that as well).
ESPN FPI Top 25 rankings, Week 13: Texas Tech holds No. 8 spot as Red Raiders take the week off
Here are the top 25 teams in the ESPN FPI college football rankings as Texas Tech rests during its bye week this week:
- Ohio State Buckeyes
- Indiana Hoosiers
- Oregon Ducks
- Georgia Bulldogs
- Notre Dame Fighting Irish
- Alabama Crimson Tide
- UTah Utes
- Texas Tech Red Raiders
- Texas A&M Aggies
- USC Trojans
- Miami Hurricanes
- Texas Longhorns
- Ole Miss Rebels
- BYU Cougars
- Oklahoma Sooners
- Tennessee Volunteers
- Vanderbilt Commodores
- Michigan Wolverines
- Missouri Tigers
- Penn State Nittany Lions
- Iowa Hawkeyes
- LSU Tigers
- Washington Huskies
- Auburn Tigers
- SMU Mustangs
It’s interesting to see so many Big Ten teams at the top of this one. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think I was expecting to see Ohio State, Indiana, and Oregon clinging to the top three spots as tightly as they are. It’s probably the Ducks that threw me off a little bit here, to be completely honest.
And that’s not a shot at Oregon, it’s just that the Ducks' schedule hasn’t panned out to be as good as most people expected it was going to be and I figured that’d show up a bit in these rankings.
We’ll get to the fact that Utah sits above Texas Tech in another article. I’m intrigued by that one given how there were *checks notes* 24 points that separated the two on the field and it wasn’t Utah that came out on top.
The SEC owns a rather interesting chunk of the middle of the rankings here. Georgia sitting at No. 4, Alabama at No. 6, A&M at No. 9, and then there’s eight teams from No. 24 (which, why are the 4-6 Auburn Tigers still this high?) to No. 12 (the 7-3 Texas Longhorns).
The rankings are interesting. They don’t tell the full story of the season, but they’re still interesting. And it’s good to see Texas Tech holding on to a top 10 spot this late into the season.