After a somewhat crazy week in College Football, the Cowboys find themselves ranked again, this time at No.25.
Oklahoma State received votes in the previous week’s poll but picked up enough to sneak in this week. We talked to some voters to see why they placed their votes for the Cowboys. This comes after OSU was listed No.23 in the first College Football Playoff Rankings.
Nathan Baird of Cleveland.com was one of two voters who had the Cowboys at their highest spot of No.19.
I basically throw out the list and start over new each week. When I did that this week, Oklahoma State had solid standing in the computer rankings I reference (Massey, Sagarin, etc). The Cowboys also have a good road win at Iowa State and a good home win over Kansas State, which is more than some teams at the bottom of the poll can say. Compared to teams like Indiana and Wake Forest, I have more evidence Oklahoma State can beat other top 25-caliber teams. I have some qualms though, especially defensively, and it’s easy to see how the Cowboys can end up out of the poll next week if things go sideways against Kansas.
That’s a solid argument. When you look at that road win against Iowa State and the home win against Kansas State, OSU is better suited than say Wake Forest or Indiana. However if things go off the rails against Kansas (which it very well could) there’s no way Oklahoma State lands back in the polls.
For Blair Kerkoff of the Kansas City Star, who had the Cowboys at No.22, it was a matter of not punishing Kansas State for narrowly losing to Texas.
This was easy for me. I didn’t think Kansas State deserved to fall out of top 25 with narrow loss at Texas. But I couldn’t rank K-State ahead of Texas or Oklahoma State because of season results and similar record. So it became a matter of where to rank those three in relation to other schools in the 20-25 range
I honestly didn’t expect Oklahoma State to be ranked again in either the CFP or the Playoff Poll so to see them ranked in both this past week was a pleasant surprise.
Here’s the full poll:
No. 24 Indiana is ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 1994, snapping the longest poll drought among Power Five conference schools.
— AP Top 25 (@AP_Top25) November 11, 2019
Full poll: https://t.co/DWCBw9fX5f
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