Final Rankings for all 133 FBS teams!

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The final SwampSwamiSports.com College Football Top 25 rankings are complete! As a special bonus, this edition contains the rankings for the other 108 teams which play in the upper (FBS) division of college football.

UNLIKE that secretive enclave of voters for the College Football Playoffs, I am giving you a chance to see how I have made my determinations and why.

If you are new to my site (welcome!), here are my rules for ranking college football teams on SwampSwamiSports.com (the rules do not change from year to year – unlike other entities):

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 thirteen wins is ranked above a team with twelve, etc.
Your team’s “best win” is determined weekly against your opponent which has the best 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!

I admit that my rankings have one significant bias which is unavoidable.

All ten FBS conferences are given equal weighting. That allows schools within the alleged “weaker” conferences (such as the poorly named Group of Five – AAC, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sunbelt) to compete for top billing alongside the traditional conference participants.

For example, you may note that my current #4 team is 13-0 Liberty University.

Liberty won every game they played this season. That includes two victories over the same New Mexico State team (now 10-4) which clobbered the SEC’s Auburn Tigers 31-10 a week before Alabama (now 12-1) rallied in the final seconds to beat Aubie 27-24.

Which team looked more impressive in beating 6-6 Auburn – the Conference USA team (New Mexico State) or the newly crowned SEC champion Alabama Crimson Tide?

Alabama would likely be a two touchdown favorite to beat New Mexico State if they played at a neutral site next weekend. Matchups also matter. New Mexico State’s defense stifled Auburn’s offense all day (200 total yards). The next week against Alabama, Auburn picked-up over 350 yards on total offense. Go figure.

Today’s release of the College Football Playoff rankings is the primary reason which I started doing my own rankings here six years ago. Despite what you may have heard from the pom-pom waving paid cheerleaders who work for ESPN, the decision involving the teams selected for this year’s Final Four of college football was quite likely influenced by money (ratings).

The CFP committee placed Michigan at #1 followed by Washington #2, Texas at #3 and Alabama at #4. Michigan will play Bama in one semifinal and Washington will tackle the Longhorns in the other. Great games, but what happened to the ACC’s 13-0 champion, Florida State?

The Seminoles just became the first unbeaten major conference team to be left out of the FBS four-team playoffs.

There were four FBS unbeaten teams remaining. For my SwampSwamiSports.com rankings, this was easy. I have #1 Michigan playing #4 Liberty and #2 Washington playing #3 Florida State.

Since Texas, Alabama and Georgia all finished with one loss apiece, they were ranked #5, 6, and 7 in my evaluation. One loss means that your team did not go undefeated. As such, you should fall behind the unbeaten teams. Better luck next season!

Promo – I am quite incensed about Florida State being left out of the CFP top four. A full story devoted to this subject will come out Monday or early Tuesday. I will share some thoughts about how Seminoles fans (and the rest of us who were not happy about this) can get a little bit of revenge. Watch for it and tell a friend!

Which team was the worst team in college football?

With 133 teams playing in the FBS upper grouping, someone had to finish last. This year, one team had no peer. At least this team was able to capture one victory this season – albeit against a lower division FCS competitor.

The Kent State Golden Flashes of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) finished just 1-11 to secure the final #133 spot. Their 38-10 triumph over Central Connecticut of the FCS group was the team’s only win. There is only one way to go next year, Kent State!

Which team was the most inconsistent in 2023?

That had to be Oklahoma State University of the Big 12.

In week #3, the 9-4 Big 12 runner-ups lost in Stillwater to the Sunbelt’s South Alabama Jaguars 33-7. The Pokes then caught fire and reeled off five impressive Big 12 wins in a row including a 27-24 over Oklahoma (which finished 10-2).

Alas, a late season trip to Orlando to play Big 12 newcomer UCF turned out as badly as being stuck on the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World for 24 hours nonstop. Okie State lost 45-3 to Central Florida (a 6-6 team).

After rallying to defeat the University of Houston and BYU in its final two games to grab second place and re-ignite fan interest, the Cowboys were thrashed on Saturday afternoon 49-21 by the Texas Longhorns in the Big 12 championship game.

Special commendation – The “Insomniac Society’s Sleep Aid Award” goes to…

The Big Ten Iowa Hawkeyes had a lot of trouble scoring points on offense. The team averaged a putrid 16.6 points per game. That was #130 out of 133 FBS teams in 2023.

Incredibly, Iowa rolled off ten wins in 2023 – most coming against the Big Ten’s sickly opponents. In the two games in which the Hawkeyes played against a ranked opponent, Iowa did not even cross the goal line! The Hawkeyes were shutout 31-0 by then #7 Penn State and 26-0 in Saturday night’s crash and burn Big Ten Championship game against #1 Michigan.

If you liked punting, Iowa was your team!

The Iowa offense was so bad (“How bad was it?”) that the Hawkeyes rolled-up just 240 yards per game on offense. That was a full 30 yards per game less than the next worst team. Yes, that would be the previously-mentioned and #133-ranked Kent State Golden Flashes.

I now believe that Iowa’s 2023 football team has been taking courses in Magician training to have finished 10-3 and make it into the Big Ten Championship game.

Then again, perhaps the entire Big Ten Conference should be discounted as being relatively weak.

Where did your favorite team finish this season? Check out my rankings for all 133 FBS teams below: