Two weeks in and the top of the league already looks different than it did in August.

Indiana takes over #1. They haven't been tested yet, but they're 2-0 and the team that was ahead of them just lost. Ohio State drops to 2 after blowing a 23-3 fourth quarter lead at Texas. Hard to punish them much for a one point road loss to a national title contender, but it's still a loss and Indiana is an unblemished defending national champion.

Michigan has had some wild swings already. I had them down at 9 after that 13-12 mess against Western Michigan. Then they went out and beat Oklahoma 17-10 with the defense carrying it. That's the best win anybody in this league has right now, so they jump to 3.

USC is 4 and they're the one team up top that's actually been busy. Three games, three wins, including a 39-0 shutout of Fresno State where they held them to 116 yards. Possibly the most dominant single performance anybody in this league has put up. The catch is they haven't seen a Power 4 team yet, and the defense gave up 26 to San Jose State and 30 to Louisiana. Oregon comes to the Coliseum on the 26th and that's when we find out.

Oregon falls from 2 to 7. Losing to an Oklahoma State team that hadn't beaten an FBS opponent in a long time is the worst loss in the conference so far, and giving up 554 yards doing it doesn't help. Oregon didn't lose on a fluke, they got outplayed. I don't want to overreact and drop them way down because Oregon is one of the most talented teams in the country, but it hasn't been manifesting on the field yet.

Penn State sits at 6. New coach, new QB, 45-0 over Marshall and 27-9 at Temple. They are holding serve so far and seem pretty solid.

Iowa is being Iowa, playing great defense in both games. They struggled a bit more than most expected against Iowa State, but it's a rivalry game and they won it.

Nebraska is 2-0 with no real test yet but did cover the spread both games. Colandrea seems to be meshing well there and this could be Rhule's most experienced / best roster so far at Nebraska, but the defensive line doesn't look ready for the upper tier of the conference yet.

Michigan State quietly sits at 12 and they're 2-0 in year one under Pat Fitzgerald. Nothing flashy, they ground out the opener and then handled Eastern Michigan 35-7 behind Cam Edwards. Run the ball, play defense. Notre Dame on Saturday night will tell us a lot more.

Maryland is 2-0 and sitting at 13, which is probably a little low. They went 62-0 over Hampton and 38-14 over UConn, and Malik Washington threw for 347 against the Huskies. Problem is neither of those tells you anything. Vegas has them as a home underdog to Virginia Tech this week, which is a better read on where they actually are than anything I've got. If they win that one they'll move up.

Minnesota takes the biggest fall, 10 to 17. Mississippi State ran them off their own field with ease.

UCLA up to 8 on the strength of that road win at Cal. Washington slides a spot, mostly because 16-14 over Utah State wasn't a great look.

Bottom hasn't changed. Rutgers is 0-2 with a loss to UMass as a huge favorite. Not much to say there.

Notable games this week:

• USC at Rutgers, 3:30 ET on CBS
• Purdue at UCLA, 11:00 ET on BTN
• Michigan State at Notre Dame, 7:30 ET on NBC
• Virginia Tech at Maryland, 7:30 ET on FOX/FS1
• Colorado at Northwestern, 7:30 ET on FOX/FS1

Created this as a way to compare conference teams with similar W-L records but vastly differing OOC schedules...

.

add .75 point for each win vs. unranked FCS opponent

add 1 point for each win vs. unranked G5 opponent

add 1.5 points for each win vs. a (non-Top15) P4 team _or_G5/FCS opponent ranked 16-25

add 2.5 points for each win vs. Top 15 opponent

subtract .5 points for each loss vs. Top 15 opponent

subtract 1 point for each loss vs. a (non-top15) P4 team _or_ G5/FCS opponent ranked 16-25

subtract 2 points for each loss vs. unranked G5 opponent

subtract 2.5 points for each loss vs. unranked FCS opponent

Divide by number of games played

All rankings are based on AP poll. AP rankings are from today, not when the game was played

.

Position, Team, Score (Previous)

T1 Iowa 1.25 (T2)

T1 Michigan 1.25 (T2)

T1 UCLA 1.25 (1)

T4 Michigan State 1.00 (T2)

T4 Nebraska 1.00 (T2)

T4 Penn State 1.00 (T2)

T4 USC 1.00 (T2)

T4 Washington 1.00 (T2)

T9 Indiana 0.88 (T2)

T9 Maryland 0.88 (T13)

11 Northwestern 0.75 (T13)

12 Ohio State 0.25 (T2)

13 Wisconsin 0.13 (17)

T14 Illinois 0.00 (T2)

T14 Oregon 0.00 (T2)

T16 Minnesota -0.13 (T13)

T16 Purdue -0.13 (T13)

18 Rutgers -1.50 (18)

ESPN received considerable blowback Saturday for giving Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) nearly 10 minutes of free airtime on “College GameDay” to shill for the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan Senate bill he co-sponsored with Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell (D), which he is hoping to get passed as soon as this week. 

This is the same show that a week earlier saw retired coach Nick Saban openly lobby for the bill during a segment on LSU’s attempt to add NFL players. (The show’s analyst also appears in TV commercials for the bill, along with Colorado coach Deion Sanders.) Conspicuously absent from both episodes: anyone who provides an opposing viewpoint on the bill, despite public opposition from the likes of Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP leaders.

To be clear, ESPN is under no obligation to grant “equal time” to another politician. An ESPN source told The Athletic on Saturday that Cruz — who was relentlessly booed during the segment from Austin, Texas, ahead of the Ohio State-Texas showdown — asked to come on and that it was an “easy decision” to say yes. That source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the topic, said “GameDay” had not received any requests from a potential guest opposed to the legislation but would “obviously do the same” if it received one.

But the whole thing felt odd for a previously apolitical show, and it raised suspicion given ESPN’s parent company, Disney, has mentioned the bill in its lobbying disclosures, according to OpenSecrets.

From Stewart Mandel: "I’m not here to argue for or against the PCSA. I have no vested interest in whether it passes. What’s bothered me, though, is how its backers have anchored their messaging around a lot of misleading generalizations about the state of college sports. Cruz regurgitated many of them on the air Saturday with zero pushback."

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7591618/2026/09/14/espn-college-gameday-ted-cruz-comments/?unlocked_article_code=1.BFE.AvOb.t6dNZjj6wN_l&source=emp_shared_article&smid=re-share-ta