Rank Thursday

It has been a while since I did a Rank day, and so now that the dust has settled on the 2007 college football season, I am going to throw one out there. But first the Rank news:

• LSU beat Ohio State to win the team’s 2nd national title of this decade. The AP writers agreed, giving LSU 60 of th 65 first place votes, meaning there will be no ’split championship’ this year.
• Of other news to fans of Louisiana schools, Hawaii was exposed by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. This reflected poorly on the WAC, which in turn hurts Louisiana Tech. Hawaii was undefeated going into the game, but was thoroughly outclassed by Georgia in the game.
• The SEC went 7-2 in bowls, and I think most reasonable CFB observers would agree that this year at least, the SEC was the strongest conference.

Now on to my rankings:

Top 5 teams in the nation:

1. LSU – no explanation needed.
2. Georgia – finished very hot, team grew up during the season.
3. USC – injuries probably killed this team this year. Bummer.
4. WVU – that whooping of OU was a serious eye-opener
5. Mizzou – the two losses to OU are a little puzzling considering what WVU did to the sooners.

My very early predictions about how the SEC standings will look at the end of next year:

East

1. UGA – young team extremely hot at the end of this year. Can Evil Richt keep it going?
2. UF – Timmay will be back, so this team will be dangerous in every game.
3. South Carolina – Can OBC use this year as a motivation for next year, or is he mentally checking out?
4. Tennessee – losing coaches, and lots of players. Rebuilding year.
5. Kentucky – recent resurgence was on arm of Woodson. He’s gone, team plummets, but won’t be terrible.
6. Vanderbilt – no comment needed.

West

1. LSU – losing lots of players, but the stable is still stocked.
2. Auburn – Franklin’s new offense looked great in bowl game, this could be a dangerous team
3. Miss State – team keeps improving, but still not ready to seriously compete for West Title
4. Bama – is JPW still the qb? That’s what I thought.
5. Arkansas – Petrino begins the rebuilding job, but loses Humanity Advanced as well as other important players.
6. Ole Miss – Rebs go Nutts, but so so much work to be done.

And my preseason top 5 for 2008:

1. UGA – This team has some nasty players, a great runner and a maturing qb with a huge arm
2. Ohio State – I think they could lose their third BCS Title game in a row to an SEC team, making them truly the Buffalo Bills
3. Oklahoma – much like the two teams above them, succeeded on the backs of very young players this year.
4. USC – this depends on Carroll – if he goes to Atlanta, then all bets are off, as they lose a qb and several other players.
5. Mizzou – can they build on this year? If so, could be very dangerous.