We are now officially through eight weeks of the 2024 college football season, honestly, things are about as murky as they were when we first started.
While Oregon is ranked as the No. 1 team in the country — and deservedly so — no team has really separated itself from the pack thus far. The gap between the top of the country and the top-12 or so teams in the nation simply isn't that wide, and we've seen that play out.
However, here's a look at three college football teams that continue to be disrespected by the vast major of fans.
BYU is accurately ranked in terms of talent and ability. The Cougars are not a top-10 team and they've benefited from a weak schedule thus far. That being said, you should still be awarded for winning your games.
In addition, it seems almosts criminal when you look at the strength of record metric. BYU is currently holds the No. 4-best strength of record in the country. The Cougars also have two wins against ranked teams: SMU and Kansas State.
If you had an SEC team with that same kind of resume, they'd be ranked in the top-five in the country. BYU, on the other hand, gets the shaft because of the name patch on their jersey.
Speaking of SEC teams getting the benefit of the doubt because of their name, that's not necessarily the case for the Texas A&M Aggies.
That's probably the first and last time that I'll ever say those words.
Texas A&M has historically been overranked. The Aggies get the benefit of their name year-in and year-out without any results to show for it. This time around, though, they are actually being disregarded by a large contingent of the country.
Texas A&M lost to Notre Dame — a ranked team — to begin the season. Since that point, the Aggies have gone unbeaten, including a 41-10 demolishing of Missour, who still remains ranked despite its struggles. Texas A&M doesn't deserve to be moved up that far in the rankings, but it doesn't make much sense that LSU — which possesses the same record with essentially the same resume — is ranked No. 8 in the country while the Aggies stay back at No. 14.
It may be proven that Pitt is just not that good. The Panthers have had several one-possession victories, but the truth of the matter is that they're undefeated and they have a better resume than Miami, for example, at least for now.
If you're looking at strength of record, Pitt has the 9th-best mark in the country. Yet, it took until this week before the Panthers moved inside the top-20. What sense does it make that an undefeated Power-4 team would be behind a two-loss Ole Miss and two-loss Alabama? Based on what metric other than "eye test" can you justify that ranking?
Pitt won't have an easy path moving forward, but the Panthers are still firmly in control of their own destiny in the ACC, though they tend to be the "forgotten team" of the conference.
Pitt will close out its year with a Thursday night game against Syracuse before traveling to SMU. They'll then have home games against UVA and Clemson before closing out the season with road trips to Louisville and Boston College.