HTR's Top 25: Week 3

Not as much football was watched this past weekend due to Saturday's day-long tailgate, but here's what I've got through two weeks of football. 

Rank	Team
1	Alabama
2	Oklahoma
3	LSU
4	Florida State
5	Stanford
6	Boise State
7	Wisconsin
8	Oregon
9	Nebraska
10	Virginia Tech
11	Texas A&M
12	Oklahoma State
13	South Carolina
14	Florida
15	Arkansas
16	Michigan State
17	Ohio State
18	Baylor
19	South Florida
20	West Virginia
21	Auburn
22	Arizona State
23	Northwestern
24	Texas
25	Mississippi State

• The Big Ten had a rough weekend, with Purdue, IU, and Iowa all losing, OSU almost losing to Toledo, and Nebraska sort of struggling with Fresno State. Other than Wisconsin, the Big Ten is just not very good. The Iowa loss makes me a feel a lot better about our late season trip to Iowa City, that's for sure. 
• Auburn winning against a pretty good Mississippi State team gets them ranked her after a tough outing last weekend against Utah State. There is no doubt that Auburn can score, and with Malzahn still there even the most mediocre of quarterbacks will produce. The defense on the other hand is a different story, a narrative with which we are all too familiar. 
• Northwestern was still deserves to be ranked in my mind for the simple fact that they're doing it without Persa. To be honest, Colter looks pretty decent. Northwestern's got Army next week then a big game against Illinois. 
• I'm not sure if I'll have the time to cover the Toledo game in "Keep Your Enemies Closer" this week, but the Buckeyes looked quite bad from what I've been able to see. They're still without a number of key contributors (Hall, Howard, Posey, etc.) but that is no excuse for the performance on Saturday. Bauserman is just not very good, which begs the question: why didn't Braxton Miller play? Whatever the answer, it's not good news for OSU. If Fickell continues to ride with Bauserman then eventually the Buckeyes will start losing when they're not playing teams like Akron and Toledo. Next week will be interesting; Miami isn't very good but they've still got enough talent to make something happen. 
• Wisconsin...how good are they? Unfortunately, we won't find out for another three weeks. 
• I don't really think Texas is very good or even really deserves to be ranked but I wasn't sure who else to include. 
• The SEC looks like it should basically be down to LSU and Alabama for the right to face some poor team from the SEC East that they'll absolutely crush in Atlanta. Alabama just throttled Penn State in Happy Valley with absolutely no mercy. Their offense doesn't look very good but I'm not sure that they really need it to be. I still stand by my prediction of Alabama winning the national championship this season.