The great thing about college football, and writing this column, is that a team can shoot up from completely out of nowhere to the top, or near the top, of this list. All it takes is 60 minutes of good football. Or maybe 60 minutes plus two overtimes. The bottom of the list, though? Yeah, it takes weeks, months or years to work your way down there.
VIBES UP
1. Oregon: After returning home to Eugene following a White Out win in Happy Valley, rumor has it Dan Lanning could be heard quoting Reese Witherspoon's Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, "What, like it's hard?" The Ducks are now 11-0 all-time in Big Ten play and get two weeks to prepare for another top-10 showdown, this time with No. 8 Indiana in Eugene. Oregon does not play another ranked team after that. There's no such thing as a CFP lock in September, but if there was, it'd be Oregon.
2. Virginia: For years, Virginia football appeared deader than my dear Aunt Frida. Until it wasn't. You could literally see belief in Cavaliers football grow as the lawn beyond the end zone grew over the course of Friday night's game, and that belief was rewarded when the home team pulled off their first home win over an AP top-10 opponent since 2005 (also over FSU). Now, the Wahoos are in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2019, with an offense that ranks in the top 10 nationally in scoring. What a difference a quarterback makes.
3. Vanderbilt: They're partying like it's 2008 in Nashville. Vandy's No. 16 ranking is tied for their highest since 2008, which happens to be the last time the Commodores began 5-0 and appeared on GameDay. There's never going to be a good time for Vanderbilt to go into Bryant-Denny, but a week after the Crimson Tide put everything they had into winning a physical war at Georgia might just be the least-bad time.
4. Ole Miss: Lane Kiffin's Rebels are No. 4 in the AP poll, their highest ranking since 2015, and more importantly they're 3-0 in SEC play. With an idle week and a home date with Washington State upcoming, Ole Miss now has three weeks to bask in the glow of their start and prepare for a 2-game road swing at No. 12 Georgia and No. 5 Oklahoma. Win one of those, and November is a relative breeze -- South Carolina, The Citadel, Florida, and at Mississippi State. A victory in Athens or Norman, and suddenly Ole Miss is a heavy favorite to play for the SEC championship and reach the College Football Playoff. Now, their odds of pulling that off are probably lower than 50 percent, but they're the closest thing to home free an SEC team can possibly be in September.
5. Memphis: The longest active winning streak belongs to Ryan Silverfield's Tigers, victors in eight straight and 27-5 in their last 32 games. Arkansas remains the only team to play this club within 21 points this season. The AAC schedule is no cakewalk, but if you had to pick the G5 rep in the CFP right now, it'd be Memphis.
6. Alabama: Oh, you thought you were going to live in a world with a 2-2 Alabama? That Alabama's SEC and CFP hopes would go to die at Sanford Stadium, where Georgia had won 33 straight while Alabama was 1-5 in its last six away from Bryant-Denny? Think again.
Saturday night was merely Game 1 in a stretch of seven consecutive losable games, so the Crimson Tide are a long way from home free. But it's now clear they'll go into that gauntlet with the best quarterback in the SEC -- since the opener, Ty Simpson is 65-of-84 (77 percent) for 884 yards (10.5 per) with nine touchdowns and no picks. There's a long way to travel between here and there, but, the Nick Saban dynasty was born with a prime-time win at No. 3 Georgia in September 2008. Maybe we'll one day look back and view this win as a similar checkpoint.
7. New Mexico: What has Jason Eck done for Lobo football in four games? Well, he's got the club off to their best start since 2007, and a record crowd of 37,440 filled University Stadium to see UNM score its largest win over New Mexico State since 2013.
8. Georgia Tech: What is culture? It's trailing 20-3 in the middle of the third quarter on the road in conference play and finding a way to win regardless. Fresh off the second-largest comeback win in school history, Brent Key's team is 5-0 for the first time since 2014.
9. Houston: I think Houston is a step below the true Big 12 championship contenders, but that's not the point. The goal of this season is to take a step forward from Willie Fritz's 4-8 debut, and four games in they've already matched last season's win total (and the year before that). The Cougars are 4-0 for the first time since 2016.
10. Texas A&M: Battered Aggie Syndrome is the gnawing feeling in your gut that your beloved Fighting Farmers would spend two weeks getting high on their own supply off that Notre Dame win by laying a stinker at home against Auburn. Trap avoided. A&M now has the closest thing the SEC offers to a glide path -- Mississippi State, Florida, at Arkansas -- before their Oct. 25 visit to LSU. Go to Baton Rouge unscathed and the No. 6 Aggies will likely do so with their highest ranking since being No. 3 in the 1995 season.
VIBES DOWN
1. Penn State: If you're James Franklin, what do you even say at this point? Actually, scratch that. He knows exactly what to say, he's done this 15 times before. They're not going to shut the program down or anything, but Penn State is at a point where it has to win at No. 1 Ohio State on Nov. 1 to instill any sort of self-belief, and that's an unbelievably difficult place to be.
2. Kentucky: Speaking of purgatory, there's the kind Penn State is trapped in and there's the kind Kentucky's in. Mark Stoops is 2-14 in his last 16 SEC games, has (by far) the worst passing offense in the SEC, and will likely be an underdog in every game moving forward except Tennessee Tech. And it would cost $40 million to break up with him.
3. Auburn: Hugh Freeze said preseason he was fully aware of the stakes he found himself in, and he bet it all on Jackson Arnold. Through two SEC games, Auburn is 3-of-28 on third down and has taken 15 sacks. What's more likely, the offense works its kinks out, or the defense breaks? Either way, No. 11 Georgia comes to Auburn in two weeks.
4. USC: Through 45 games, Lincoln Riley is one game behind Clay Helton's pace, at like three times the price. The defense allowed Luke Altmyer to play nearly a perfect game a week after Indiana made him nearly unplayable, and Michigan and Notre Dame both think they're going to bully you in your next two games.
5. Florida State: Winning on the road in conference play on a Friday night is one of the most difficult things to do in college football, so this ranking isn't about that. It's about the gulf between what is and what might have been. The Seminoles fell a whole 10 spots in the AP poll, behind a whole bunch of teams without a win nearly as impressive as their 31-17 defeat of Alabama... including Alabama itself. Play a little better defense on Friday and Mike Norvell's team might very well be in the top five with an opportunity to score two of the four best wins of the entire season with No. 3 Miami coming to town as the Seminoles took their place in the dead center of the college football universe this week. And now, GameDay will be in Tuscaloosa for Vandy-Alabama while Florida State looks to reclaim ground it had already taken this season.