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Congratulations, Texas Longhorns fans. You are finally back!
The Texas Longhorns are atop the standings in the first SwampSwamiSports.com College Football Top 25 rankings for the week ending September 30, 2023.
Yes, I know that the AP and others have been publishing polls since August. But why?
Every major college football team has now played at least four games through last weekend. Most have played five games and a few teams have even played in six contests already.
There is now enough evidence (both statistically and via our own eyes) to provide a fair way to rank all 133 major college football teams in the FBS division.
By the way, we say, “Welcome to the big time!” to the Jacksonville State (Alabama) Gamecocks and Sam Houston State University Bearkats. Both schools have moved up from the FCS division beginning this year.
Oh, say can you C-USA?
You have heard a lot of talk about the incredible number of conference changes which are coming in 2024. Have you heard about the road kill which Conference USA has become in 2023?
C-USA has been run over by a proverbial train after the 2022 collegiate season. A large number of its former members have bolted for a new conference. Take a look at this carnage:
2022 Conference USA Teams 2023 Conference Affiliation
Charlotte American Athletic Conference (AAC)
Florida Atlantic AAC
North Texas AAC
Old Dominion AAC
Rice University AAC
UAB AAC
UT-San Antonio AAC
Florida International C-USA
Louisiana Tech C-USA
Middle Tennessee C-USA
UT-El Paso C-USA
Western Kentucky C-USA
Just one year earlier, Conference USA lost three long-time members – Marshall University, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss – to the Sunbelt Conference.
The 2023 version of the newly patched-up Conference USA has added three new teams to the remaining five holdovers. Former independent New Mexico State joined C-USA this season along with newbies Jacksonville State (Alabama) and Sam Houston State.
Today’s eight team Conference USA once boasted of 14 members as recently as the 2021 football season. The mass exodus from this long-time mid-level conference is mostly about television exposure and, of course, television network money.
Conference USA struggled mightily to obtain quality television time slots for its teams. ESPN (which has the largest number of potential viewers) generally shunned C-USA games for years.
Looking elsewhere, Conference USA signed a long-term contract with the CBS Sports Network to showcase its games. However, the CBS Sports Network is carried in significantly fewer cable television households in the US than ESPN.
Making competitive matters worse for C-USA, the AAC and Sunbelt Conferences both inked exclusive long-term deals with the ESPN family of networks. C-USA games are barely noticed by fans nationally when games are televised on the CBS Sports Network.
In 2022, Conference USA negotiated a unique deal which allowed ESPN (or ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN+) to televise a certain number of mid-week college football games during the month of October. Alas, those games will be played on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. Some football teams will have as little as three days to prepare for these mid-week games.
This odd TV capitulation toward ESPN by Conference USA was not a fan-friendly move by the league.
For example, Louisiana Tech in Ruston draws half of its football fans from either the Shreveport-Bossier City metropolitan area (70 miles to the west) or from Monroe-West Monroe (30 miles to the east). Playing weeknight football games simply for the sake of television exposure hurts local attendance as many potential fans are reluctant to take time off from work to attend a mid-week game.
Now, let’s unveil our initial Top 25 rankings for 2023!
If you are new to my site (welcome!), here are my rules for ranking college football teams on SwampSwamiSports.com:
- Teams without a loss are ranked higher than any team which has lost a game. Why should a team a perfect record be ranked below a team with one loss?
- A team with five wins is ranked above a team with four, etc.
- Your team’s “best win” is determined weekly against your opponent which has the best record won/loss record thus far in the season. It matters who you beat!
- Preference is given to your team’s “best win” if it comes on the road vs. a home win.
- Ties are broken by point differentials in each team’s “best win”.
- A win over an FBS team receives preference over a win over an FCS school.
- A head-to-head win over another team with the same number of losses gets preference.
- All decisions by the administrator of this site (me) are FINAL!
Kicking the Dawgs to the curb to start this season!
This year, I decided to make one change to my rankings. In the past, I have given initial preference to currently unbeaten teams which were ranked in the final AP Top 25 from the previous season. That would mean that unbeaten 5-0 Georgia (last year’s champion) would start this year’s 2023 rankings as the #1 team.
Georgia plays one of the nation’s easiest schedules this season. Last Saturday, the Dawgs struggled to beat 3-2 Auburn last weekend. Georgia has not proved itself worthy of starting this year as my #1 team based on its relatively weak early season performance. They are #6 this week.
Drum roll, please!
Instead, let’s salute the University of Texas Longhorns for being the #1 team in the initial SwampSwamiSports.com College Football rankings for 2023. The 5-0 Horns went to Tuscaloosa and soundly defeated Alabama (now 4-1) on national television last month. They will have their hands full this Saturday as Texas plays the #12 team (Oklahoma) in the annual Red River Shoot-out in Dallas.
In addition to unveiling the entire Top 25, I have provided the entire group of one-loss teams through September 30, 2023 so that you will be able to see where your favorite team is ranked. Come back next week to see my rankings for each of the 133 FBS teams!
Below are the remaining teams with just one loss through the week ending September 30, 2023:
