"Separation" Saturday

So there were a lot of big matchups this weekend, and some of them turned out to be a lot of fun to watch, while some were as overbilled as OSU at Texas last week. But despite all the marquee games, there wasn't that much of a shakeup in the rankings. Basically, there were three teams who lost a lot of ground - Notre Dame fell to #42 from #2, Nebraska fell to #32 from #4, and LSU fell from #7 to #30. Perhaps the biggest fall though was UConn from #5 to #58, but they were overrated at #5 anyway, and a loss sent them plummeting, so all works out in the end. As for the real winners, basically you've got Michigan. They scooted up to #3 from #11 after trouncing ND. Florida, Ohio State, VT, and 'Bama all picked up a few spots. Give it up for Rutgers too who are 3-0. If they ever lose though, they're going to be in the same 50-spot-drop scenario as Uconn due to SOS. Everyone seemed surprised that Louisville could walk all over Miami, but they were ranked #6 last week where Miami was #49, so that really shouldn't have been all that much of a shock. Not too many close matchups on the docket for next week (at least at a cursory glance), but it is interesting to look at the score dropoffs caused by losses. The lowest-ranked undefeated school (UCLA, 2-0) comes in about 0.785 whereas the highest-ranked one-loss team (LSU, 2-1) comes in around 0.481. Lesson learned? Don't lose. Seems obvious enough, right? And at this point, with only 3 weeks gone, a loss is going to hurt really bad. But taken out of 12 regular-season games, 1 loss isn't going to kill you. This is what happens when you base half of the rankings on winning, but f you wanna be the best, you gotta win.