NCAAF Rankings: Oregon the new No. 1, North Carolina Rising, and More

Another excellent college football week is in the books, and Claudia Bellofatto and I discussed the latest top-25 rankings updates on our weekly Betting Life show. As always, enjoy the ranks, make sure you tune in Saturdays at 10 a.m ET for our live YouTube pregame show, and if you have any questions or comments, hit me up on X at @thorku. Thank you for reading!

Risers in the College Football Power Rankings

• North Carolina Tar Heels
• Kennesaw State Owls
• Cal Bears
• ECU Pirates

North Carolina is a team that we were sort of out on after they lost Max Johnson. There were some struggles, particularly with the offense, trying to figure it out in September. They've started to figure some stuff out. And it was extremely impressive blowing up Virginia, 41-14. Virginia is on the up, and so to go in there and deck them like that, I thought was pretty impressive. They're our biggest riser in the Power Rankings. 

Kennesaw State is up 15 spots after the rousing upset of Liberty midweek. I love the C-USA midweek — we get two full months of the midweek games, and that one was incredible. I watched the whole game. 

Kennesaw, for me, became America's Team that day, because my worst nightmare was seeing Liberty in the 12-team playoff. We knew how that movie was going to end. And if you don't, go back and watch the film from Oregon-Liberty last January. Kennesaw prevents that by knocking Liberty off — Liberty's playoff hopes are done. And Kennesaw, a team in their first year in the FBS, gets their first FBS win against the team that people thought last year was the best G5 team. So that was pretty cool. 

Cal is up 14 spots after blowing out Oregon State, 44-7. Cal struggled with some injuries earlier in the season. They're getting healthier, they're they're getting better, and it was an impressive showing by them. 

And then the last team on our riser list, ECU is up 13 spots. After they fired Mike Houston, they go out and annihilate Temple, 56-34. They were looking for some signs of life at ECU. 

We thought it was kind of curious that they fired Mike Houston before they were about to get to this easy part of the schedule where ECU then could rally. And the theory behind that — maybe the administration did not want him back under any circumstance. Obviously they did not. The interim coach and the team go in there and they blow out Temple. So ECU gets a bit of a bump in the Power Rankings.

Fallers in the College Football Power Rankings

• UCF Knights
• Utah Utes
• Oregon State Beavers
• Maryland Terrapins

UCF had a tough showing, and I was on UCF against BYU. UCF has the profile of a team that matches up on paper really well against BYU. I thought that game was really interesting — BYU is just rock solid, regardless of the circumstance. They're really well coached, and I thought UCF's game plan in a neutral script was a little bit wonky, trying to throw it a little bit more against a good pass defense when BYU's run defense is rancid. They got into trouble early there. And when you get into trouble against BYU, it becomes a boulder going down the hill. They're not going to let you survive self-inflicted wounds. And they didn't allow UCF to. 

Utah's down 13 spots. Cam Rising is out, and now the backup, Isaac Wilson, also is injured. So we're going to see what we get in future weeks. The offense, as putrid as it is, can't survive another quarterback injury. But Houston has a good defense — so basically, at this point, those two programs are about at the same spot. They both play decent defense, and they both can't move the ball. So we got into a coin-flip situation. Houston comes out on the right side of it, but it's tough to trust Utah going forward against any opponent with a pulse. I mean, Houston barely has one, and Utah lost to them. 

Oregon State falls down 12 spots after being blown up by Cal. 

Maryland is down 11 spots after getting decked by Minnesota, 48-23. Since we've gotten into Big Ten play, we have seen some holes in that team. They obviously got exploited there by the Gophers, so they have to pick up the pieces quickly. 

Thor's Top 25

For all 134 teams, check out my power rankings page.