It wasn’t that long ago that the Alabama Crimson Tide went on the road and lost to a Florida State team that desperately needed a win to help cool down the hot seat that Mike Norvell was facing. Now, this weekend, we’ve seen No. 8 FSU lose to Virginia and No. 17 Alabama just upended the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs.
It’s fair to guess that we’re probably going to see some rankings shakeup in the AP Poll Top 25 on Sunday. I mean, it just doesn’t seem all that likely that things stay put right where they are after the No. 17 team in the country hit the road and beat the No. 5 team in the country.
But how will that impact Texas Tech? At No. 12 in the last AP Poll rankings, the Red Raiders are sandwiched in the middle a bit in between both Alabama and Georgia.
Let’s take a look at what might happen.
AP Poll Top 25 college football rankings: Does Georgia’s loss to Alabama help Texas Tech at all?
First, let's go over what the rankings look like heading into Sunday. Here’s what the AP poll college football rankings looked like entering Texas Tech’s bye week:
- Ohio State Buckeyes
- Miami Hurricanes
- Penn State Nittany Lions
- LSU Tigers
- Georgia Bulldogs
- Oregon Ducks
- Oklahoma Sooners
- FSU Seminoles
- Texas A&M Aggies
- Texas Longhorns
- Indiana Hoosiers
- Texas Tech Red Raiders
- Ole Miss Rebels
- Iowa State Cyclones
- Tennessee Vols
- Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
- Alabama Crimson Tide
- Vanderbilt Commodores
- Michigan Wolverines
- Missouri Tigers
- USC Trojans
- Notre Dame Fighting Irish
- Illinois Fighting Illini
- TCU Horned Frogs
- BYU Cougars
The Red Raiders, sitting at No. 12, had a few teams ahead of them suffer losses this week (and the Georgia Bulldogs are one of those teams). But, given where Georgia was ranked and when considering that they lost to Alabama, I’m not sure just how far the Bulldogs will fall.
If it were another team ranked at No. 17, part of me would expect to see Georgia outside the top 10 this coming week, but I don’t think that’ll happen here. And even if it did happen here, I think we’re going to see Alabama launch itself up and potentially leapfrog Texas Tech.
Part of my thinking there is because I am suspicious of a little brand bias influencing things here and part of that is because this win is actually a solid one for the Crimson Tide. We can admit that. After all, they did just beat the No. 5 team while on the road.
There are a few other things that are going to shake the rankings up a bit. We did see FSU lose to Virginia on Friday. It’s probably more than fair to expect them to be out of the top 10 at this point. But will Texas Tech get in because of the Crimson Tide’s win? I’m not convinced of that happening.