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Following the Gators; big win over South Carolina, the Gators vault into third place in this week's Alligator Army Power Rankings.
Just a quick refresher on how the rankings work: scoring offense (SO) plus scoring defense (SD) plus win/loss record (WL) times strength of schedule (SoS). For details about how we arrive at these rankings, please see our first power rankings.
| Rank (Delta) | Team | Score |
| 1 (0) | Alabama | 1.5605 |
| 2 (0) | Notre Dame | 1.511 |
| 3 (3) | Florida | 1.4495 |
| 4 (-1) | Texas Tech | 1.3541 |
| 5 (4) | Oregon | 1.3269 |
| 6 (-1) | Oklahoma | 1.315 |
| 7 (5) | Kansas St. | 1.2727 |
| 8 (2) | Cincinnati | 1.2096 |
| 9 (-2) | Texas A&M | 1.196 |
| 10 (-2) | Oregon St. | 1.1924 |
| 11 (5) | Florida St. | 1.1626 |
| 12 (-8) | West Virginia | 1.1313 |
| 13 (2) | LSU | 1.1178 |
| 14 (3) | Stanford | 1.0786 |
| 15 (-2) | Ohio St. | 1.0591 |
| 16 (5) | Rutgers | 1.0219 |
| 17 (-3) | South Carolina | 1.0134 |
| 18 (7) | Nebraska | 0.9798 |
| 19 (9) | Arizona | 0.9735 |
| 20 (2) | Penn St. | 0.9638 |
| 21 (12) | Mississippi St. | 0.9632 |
| 22 (-3) | Texas | 0.9505 |
| 23 (3) | Michigan | 0.9354 |
| 24 (6) | Clemson | 0.9119 |
| 25 (-14) | Iowa St. | 0.899 |
Other teams on the Florida schedule:
- 37. Georgia
- 41. Tennessee
- 52. Missouri
- 74. Vanderbilt
- 81. Kentucky
- 82. Louisiana-Lafayette
- 86. Bowling Green
Other Florida schools:
- 49. Miami
- 56. USF
- 67. UCF
- 101. FIU
- 114. FAU
Pitiful Auburn, after the loss to Vanderbilt, is still pulling up the rear in the SEC at No. 97, and Idaho is still at the bottom overall with a ghastly score of 0.2715.
The Gators just keep grinding, and that helps them move up in the power rankings. LSU, South Carolina, and Texas A&M keep boosting the Gators' strength of schedule, but after the Georgia game next week, that will likely take a hit: Florida faces the lightest part of its schedule leading up to the FSU game.
After a poor showing at Kentucky, Georgia continues its freefall in our power rankings. Georgia fans had to have mixed emotions over the weekend: The South Carolina loss puts the Dawgs in a position to win the East with a win in Jacksonville on Saturday, but the Gators' performance, coupled with the inability of the Bulldogs' defense to stop Kentucky's running game, has to make them queasy.
Texas A&M stays in the top 10 despite the loss to LSU due to offense and strength of schedule.
The Big 12 is starting to take shape. Baylor dropped out of the top 25, barely, but Kansas State finally made a move with a big win over West Virginia.
The tire fire that is the ACC this year had just two teams in the top 25 (No. 11 FSU, and No. 24 Clemson), but N.C. State (No. 33) and Duke (No. 39) are on pace to play for the league championship.
Making the ACC look good by comparison is the Big Ten, whose three ranked teams are all in the bottom half of the top 25, two of them (Ohio State and Penn State) on probation and ineligible for postseason play.
The Pac-12 may be decided by the Civil War at the end of the season, when Oregon and Oregon State clash. Southern Cal may be leading in the South Division, but in the next three weeks they go to Arizona and play Oregon and Arizona State at home, three teams ranked above them in our power rankings. While the Trojans may be getting love from the pollsters thus far, their resume doesn't back it up.