College Football Power Rankings: Colorado and Notre Dame Slide, Army Surges, and More

Three of the biggest movers this week in the Power Rankings were teams that were “bottom of the FBS"-projected squads at the start of the season. And we have four teams that slid pretty drastically. 

Claudia Bellofatto and I analyzed the power rankings, my game model's projected lines, and more on our Betting Life College Football Show (we're live Monday, Thursday, and Saturday every week), and because we love you all so very much, we went ahead and transcribed some of the Power Rankings talk below, for those of you who don't enjoy videos as much as we do. 

If it's your huckleberry, though, the full show is embedded below:

The Power Rankings Risers: San Jose State, Army, and more

The biggest mover this week? No. 96 San Jose State, up 18 spots. Ken Niumatalolo, the former Navy coach, goes and takes over San Jose State. He's not running the triple option there; he has a new offensive system, an up-tempo spread — and it's working so far. They played really well at the outset of the season and upset Air Force over the weekend. 

No. 123 UL-Monroe is up 7 spots this week under new head coach Bryant Vincent. They go in this week and annihilate UAB, the program that didn't want Vincent as the permanent head coach — they hired Trent Dilfer, and that sent Vincent along his way. And Vincent gets the last laugh.

No. 92 Army is up 17 spots — they had an impressive win over the weekend.

The Power Rankings Losers: Notre Dame, Colorado, and more

No. 13 Notre Dame is down 8. Not a great day for Notre Dame on Saturday. I wouldn't be jumping off bridges quite yet if I were an Irish fan, but the Irish headed into that game 5th in the AP and 28.5-point favorites over Northern Illinois. And the first drive they went down and they moved the ball up the field really easily. And Riley Leonard looked good, and it's 7-0, Notre Dame. And it's like, “OK, we can flip to another channel now, because this game's over.” And from there on out, NIU outplayed Notre Dame. Notre Dame needs to get together and figure its offense out, but there isn't any issue on the defensive side. 

Going forward, Notre Dame is top 10 nationally at all three levels of the defense. You just have to fix that offense. That's an outlier game from what you know Riley Leonard can do. So I think now is the time to buy the dip

No. 67 Colorado is the team with the biggest stock dip after getting whipped by Nebraska over the weekend; they're down 23 spots. 

No. 70 Appalachian State, who got run by Clemson, giving up 66 points in that game — they're down 20 spots. Not a great start to the season for Appy State so far. 

And then No. 42 Kentucky and No. 50 Georgia Tech — two Power Four teams — are both down 15 spots in this week's Power Rankings. 

Later in the season, we won't see precipitous movement like this — but when you have 20% of the data set (after 2-ish games), with these results at the beginning of the season — where they've exceeded expectations and taken out some of this stuff that we had assumed — that's where you see some of these jumps up. 

We're trying to stay with the market on this. And so teams have indicated that they're going to be better than we thought heading in. You have to get them up there and try and get ahead of the market, which is why the projections we have are so important.

Thor Nystrom's College Football Top 25

(You can find all 134 teams power ranked here)