HTR's Top 25: Week 4

After three weeks of football, it's hard to make any statements that won't result in general facepalming a week or two down the road. We still don't know much of anything about a lot of teams (looking at you, Wisconsin), and general early season anti-ranking caveats go here.

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

• So a plague of locusts essentially wiped out last week's 21-25 (Auburn, Mississippi State, Northwestern, and Arizona State). The Auburn loss was an inevitability. I guarantee you those staff meetings are mighty awkward given the performance of the offense and defense; I'd imagine that Ted Roof and Gus Malzahn aren't the best of buds. Mississippi State is a team who I still think is good but just has a terribly raw deal playing in the loaded SEC West, where Ole Miss is really the only gimme and that's a rivalry game for them so it really isn't. 
• Honestly, I feel like college football in general this year is just mediocre. When the best teams are offensively challenged LSU and Alabama teams and an Oklahoma team that is still elite but not quite up to the level of the Bradford-led teams, you know college football is a little down. I just look at the top 25 and see a pretty huge dropoff after the top 3, and then an even bigger dropoff around where I have Oregon. 
• Other departures: Ohio State and Michigan State. C YA! The MSU loss was expected because I still maintained that ND was a good team despite their 0-2 record. Not much has changed about my opinion of the Spartans: the skill players are there and the defense is a smorgasbord of not bad but not good but that offensive line is a disaster. If Michigan is not able to generate any pressure against them then that would be a black mark on our personnel and Mattison as well. 
• In addition to proclaiming the general mediocrity pervading the 2011 college football season, the Big Ten is nothing to write home about. In fact, it's quite terrible. Michigan might be slightly better or slightly worse or just about the same as last year (depending on how you look at things), but if they don't win eight with this schedule then I'll admit that I'd be pretty disappointed. 
• Despite the lack of quality in the Big Ten, I'm kind of high on Illinois. The Illini picked up a nice win over the Sun Devils to put them at 3-0. The offense still can't really throw the ball but they can move it on the ground, as they continue to be basically Michigan minus the Denard-inspired swooning. Looking at the schedule, I thought to myself: "Wow, Illinois could really be 9-0 when they face us in November." Seriously, look at their schedule. Illinois has an intriguing tilt with Western Michigan this weekend that might allow us to gauge Michigan's relative quality against the Illini's. 
• Alabama hasn't necessarily done anything wrong to lose the top spot, but their throttling of PSU looks instantly less impressive after the Temple game. That, paired with Oklahoma marquee win and LSU's resume thus far leads me to bump the Tide down...for now. This is moot because the LSU-Bama showdown on November 5th in Tuscaloosa will settle this.
• USC? Georgia Tech? Clemson? West Virginia? All decidedly meh. Don't let Clemson's 3-0 start fool you...Dabo will almost assuredly derp this team to a 4+ loss regular season. The LSU-WVU will certainly be a hilarious intersection of zany college football cultures/head coach personalities. Whenever the apocalypse happens, I'm pretty sure a game between the Tigers and Mountaineers will be played on an asteroid floating in the Shenandoah River. It will be raining coal and burning couches and Les Miles will spike the ball on first down over and over again because this is a world in which Les Miles exists and NOTHING MAKES SENSE. 
• Oh hey there South Florida, you're still here? It's cool if you hang out I guess, you can crash on the couch but I'm going to be heading out pretty soon to run some errands, so...yeah. 
• Vanderbilt gets in as the "just because" team of the week. Also, let's be honest, this is the last time this season (or the rest of Time, maybe) that I'll be able to sneak them in with a straight face. The 'Dores hereby replace Northwestern as the team of nerds that peeks in the door of the top 25, and, upon seeing such low-brow commotion over mere sport, retreats to its study without a fuss (loudness is the first cousin of penury, after all).