Week 3 power rankings for each college football conference

As each week passes, more emphasis must be placed on the current season results and less on preconceived notions. No change at the top or the bottom, but separation and movement abounds in the middle tiers, though half of the conference has played only a single FBS opponent.

Virginia Tech pairing competent offense with its trademark defense gives it as good an argument as any for being the No. 2 team in the conference. Notre Dame's dismantling of Michigan gives it an argument, too, while Clemson and Louisville hang around in the group.

Pitt has looked very good against some iffy competition, as has Duke.

The Sooners look every bit like the College Football Playoff contender we expected, albeit one that hasn't been tested yet. Through two games against subpar mid-majors, OU has posted a 100-23 margin. Next up is Tennessee in Norman, which should tell us more about where Bob Stoops' crew is headed, but probably not that much.

It's another September of smashing stuff for Baylor, whose toughest opponent out of the season's first five weeks is either Buffalo, Iowa State, or the bye. Injury issues have already crept into Baylor's offense, so we'll have to see if that derails the good-times-destroy-everything machine as it did last year.

The Big Ten is demonstrably terrible. The Big Ten had three major non-conference games this past Saturday and promptly lost all of them like so many sets of keys.

The Big Ten has money and a footprint and an alumni base to be reckoned with, and yet the Big Ten is dead-set on becoming a basketball conference.

They could have sank. Down nine early in the third quarter against a ferocious Michigan State defense, Oregon could have become the latest high-powered attack dismantled at the hands of Pat Narduzzi and Mark Dantonio. Instead they soared, blistering their way to an absurd 28 points over the final 25 minutes, ending the game with a 46-27 win, and the young season's most impressive performance by any team. There’s little question that the Ducks head the elite tier of the conference, with resurgent USC a cut below.

Below those two teams sits David Shaw’s Stanford squad, which botched a potential victory with some horrendous red-zone play, as nine Cardinal drives inside the USC 30 produced only 10 points. Still, because their loss came against a very strong Trojan team, it’s hard to push them down any further, especially when the other potential contenders for the No. 3 spot still haven’t done quite enough to warrant a move up.

You did not make it easy to power rank you this week, SEC.

Alabama, Auburn, Texas A&M, LSU, Florida, and Arkansas beat Florida Atlantic, San Jose State, Lamar, Sam Houston State, Eastern Michigan, and Nicholls State by a combined margin of 367-23. Just so we’re absolutely clear, that’s a real statistic, not something I made up for rhetorical impact. The best team of that sorry bunch is probably San Jose State, which entered the week ranked No. 74 in F/+. Sadly, Ole Miss’ thrashing over conference opponent Vanderbilt doesn’t look like it qualifies as a much more impressive win.

The BYU Cougars continue to make their case for not being an "Underdog." And QB Taysom Hill is making it hard to not consider him an early candidate for the Heisman, with eight touchdowns in two games. Sure, Texas isn’t what it once was. But the Cougars didn’t just beat Bevo; they took him to the slaughterhouse.

Don’t sleep on Navy out of this group. The Midshipmen’s triple option is as dangerous as ever with Keenan Reynolds and Ryan Williams-Jenkins carrying the rock.

And let’s talk about CMU for a second. The Chippewas may have beat up on a bad Purdue team, but they are 2-0 with one of the deepest batch of returning starters in the FBS. Don’t be shocked to see them hang out on these rankings for a while.