The MyGameSim college football rankings are updated after Week 8, and the top of the board barely blinked. Ohio State is still No. 1. Georgia is still No. 2. Both were idle, and neither gave the model a reason to move them. The noise was underneath, where a handful of Saturday results shoved teams several spots in either direction.
Indiana also held serve at No. 3, and that one was earned on the field. The Hoosiers went into Ann Arbor and won 13-6 in overtime, their first win at Michigan Stadium since 1967. It was ugly. It was also enough to keep a top-three profile intact.
The games that moved the board
Four results did most of the work in this update.
- South Carolina beat Tennessee 27-24 on Malik Orsan's 48-yard field goal as time expired. LaNorris Sellers accounted for three touchdowns, and a late strip sack set up the kick.
- LSU went into Jordan-Hare and beat Auburn 38-17. That was a ranked-on-ranked game, and the margin is why the two teams swapped places in a big way.
- UCF knocked off BYU 39-31 in double overtime. Keyone Jenkins hit Grayson Brousseau for the winning score, and BYU's fourth-down try to extend it fell incomplete.
- UCLA stayed unbeaten with a 28-10 win over Michigan State and moved up to No. 7.
A few other Top 25 games mattered on the margins. Alabama beat Texas A&M 31-20 and moved up one spot to No. 4. Texas handled Ole Miss 34-27 and is now No. 6. Miami rolled Pittsburgh 52-23 and still slipped one spot to No. 5, because Alabama's win was the stronger efficiency bump. TCU lost at home to West Virginia 24-20, and Iowa dropped a 13-10 game at Minnesota. Both fell two spots.
Biggest movers
South Carolina (+7, 25 to 18) is the biggest climb inside the Top 25. The Gamecocks were hanging on the last line a week ago. Beating Tennessee at Williams-Brice, on a walk-off kick after a rally, is the kind of result that forces a computer ranking to take a 4-3 team seriously.
Auburn (-8, 16 to 24) is the biggest fall. A week ago the Tigers were living off the Georgia win. Saturday's 38-17 home loss to LSU gave a lot of that back. LSU (+4, 15 to 11) is the team that collected it. The Tigers are 6-2 and sitting just outside the top 10.
BYU (-4, 6 to 10) paid for the first loss of the season, and it came in a messy way: double overtime, on the road, against a team that entered the weekend at No. 24. UCF (+3, 24 to 21) moved up for beating them, though a three-spot bump is a reminder that one signature win does not rewrite a 4-3 profile overnight.
Tennessee (-3, 20 to 23) slid after the South Carolina loss, a week after the Vols had jumped seven spots for beating Alabama. Wisconsin (-5, 17 to 22) is the odd one. The Badgers beat USC 24-7 and still dropped five places. These rankings lean on adjusted offense and defense, and a comfortable win over USC did not move Wisconsin's profile as fast as the teams that jumped them.
Updated MyGameSim Top 25
- Ohio State (6-1)
- Georgia (6-1)
- Indiana (7-1)
- Alabama (6-2) up 1
- Miami (7-0) down 1
- Texas (5-2) up 1
- UCLA (7-0) up 2
- Wake Forest (6-1)
- Louisville (4-3) up 1
- BYU (6-1) down 4
- LSU (6-2) up 4
- Notre Dame (6-1) down 1
- Oklahoma (4-3) up 1
- TCU (3-4) down 2
- Iowa (5-2) down 2
- SMU (6-1) up 2
- Michigan (4-3) up 2
- South Carolina (4-3) up 7
- Missouri (5-2) up 2
- Oklahoma State (5-2) up 2
- UCF (4-3) up 3
- Wisconsin (5-2) down 5
- Tennessee (6-2) down 3
- Auburn (4-3) down 8
- Florida (5-2) down 2
Ohio State did not have to do anything this week to stay No. 1, which is its own kind of statement. The Buckeyes are off until a trip to USC, and the rest of the country spent Saturday rearranging the spots behind them. The full board is on the MyGameSim CFB rankings page.
