After finishing the season ranked #29 last year, the Arizona Wildcats — hot off their upset win at Oregon — have claimed the top spot in the inaugural 2014 Anderson & Hester Rankings. The second and fourth spots are held by two schools from Mississippi — #2 Mississippi and #4 Mississippi State — that went a combined 15-11 last year. Sandwiched in between are the Auburn Tigers, who came within 14 seconds of winning last season’s national championship. TCU, which went 4-8 last year, rounds out the top-5.
This is quite a different list than one finds in the coaches’ poll. That poll has Arizona ranked 13th, two spots behind the Ducks team that the undefeated Wildcats just beat in Eugene. It has undefeated TCU ranked 12th, three spots behind the Oklahoma team that the Horned Frogs just beat on Saturday. And it has both Mississippi teams, each of which has handed a team its only loss — Mississippi beat (4-1) Alabama, Mississippi State beat (5-1) Texas A&M — behind Baylor, which has yet to beat (or play) a team in the top-65 (in the Anderson & Hester Rankings).
Of course, the top three teams in the Anderson & Hester Rankings could very well all lose this coming weekend. Arizona plays USC (which should be looking to rebound after inexplicably failing to cover a receiver on a successful game-ending Hail Mary by Arizona State), Ole Miss plays at Texas A&M (which will be looking to bounce back after getting crushed on Saturday by Mississippi State), and Auburn plays at Mississippi State (so either #3 or #4 will lose). But the point of these rankings isn’t to prejudge teams or to predict future results; it’s to reward actual accomplishments. And if the season ended today, (5-0) Arizona would have accomplished more in it than any other team in the land.
Already this season is shaping up a lot like 2007-08, when nobody seemed to want to play for the championship, mediocrity reigned, and LSU ended up claiming the national title with two losses.
But in another sense, it also looks a lot like the 2008-09 season. That year, the Big 12 South featured three of the top eight teams in the nation, led by the #3 Texas Longhorns and their junior quarterback Colt McCoy. (Four of the five Heisman finalists that year — joining Florida junior Tim Tebow from the SEC — came from that sub-conference, including winner Sam Bradford and runner-up McCoy.)
This year, the SEC West looks like it might be even better than the Big 12 South was that year. That half of the Southeastern Conference currently features the #2, #3, #4, and #9 (Alabama) teams in the country, while its other three teams are all in the top-40 (#13 Texas A&M, #38 LSU, and #40 Arkansas). Those seven quality squads will be knocking heads a lot between now and December, which means that — regardless of what’s happening in the rest of the country on a given week — there will likely be at least one good game involving the SEC West.
