The Little Apple doesn’t give much away. Visiting teams come to Bill Snyder Family Stadium with a plan and leave with notes in the margins. Houston left Saturday with a 35-16 win, a 5-1 record, and a name a line higher in the national ledger. Now the Cougars get to carry all of it home.
One line. A 19-point road win, and the voters answered with a nudge. The Cougars went from No. 19 to No. 18 in the Sundays latest USA Today Sports US LBM Coaches Poll with 520 points. It is the best Houston has stood in this poll all season. By Friday’s betting numbers, the Cougars went to Manhattan as road underdogs and came home having made that number look foolish. Voters are a stingy lot, and nobody throws a parade for a man who finishes his work and doesn’t mention it.
Willie Fritz has never been one to lean into a microphone anyway.
https://twitter.com/UHCougarFB/status/2109283766212661300?s=20
A new king in Athens
The big news is at the top. Georgia is No. 1, and it took the seat decisively: 60 first-place votes, 1,832 points, and a jump from No. 2. Texas, last week’s No. 1, went the other way. The Longhorns fell five spots to No. 6 at 4-1 and drew no first-place votes. Rankings are easy to give and easy to take back, and the poll took this one back in a hurry.
Behind the Bulldogs, the unbeaten teams moved up in a line, each one spot higher. Notre Dame (6-0) is No. 2, Miami (5-0) is No. 3, Indiana (6-0) is No. 4, and Ohio State (5-1) is No. 5. Orderly people, college football voters, when the scoreboard gives them an excuse.
The one still perfect
In the Big 12, the story starts and ends with Provo. BYU is 5-0 and No. 8 with 1,355 points, unchanged from last week and still the highest-ranked team in the league. Texas Tech is right behind at No. 9, also 5-0, with 1,240 points. That is 115 points of daylight between two teams that have yet to lose, which in October is either a lot or nothing at all.
It’s also the team that beat Houston, 28-26, back on Sept. 18. That is the lone mark on the Cougars’ record, and it was made by two points. Utah, 5-0, moved up one to No. 11 (1,109). The league’s other two ranked teams are the ones with a blemish. Houston is 5-1 at No. 18, and Oklahoma State, 4-1, is back at No. 20 after a six-spot jump from outside the rankings, with 403 points. Five Big 12 teams are ranked, and three of them haven’t lost a game. The rest of the field is watching. Arizona picked up 92 votes among the others receiving votes, and Baylor got 9.
Elsewhere the week had its casualties. LSU slid 11 spots to No. 21 at 4-2. Oregon fell 12 to No. 25 at 3-2. Florida, Duke and Pittsburgh dropped out altogether. UCLA, 5-0, jumped 10 places to No. 12, and Kentucky climbed eight to No. 17.
Home again
Houston’s one place won’t change a season on its own, and nobody here is counting spots. The Cougars have spent the season being underestimated and have handled it the way a good ballplayer handles a slump, by showing up the next day and hitting the ball. Beating Kansas State by 19 in a place that has a long memory for visitors tells you more about a team than where the voters write it down.
What comes next is easier to read than any poll. In Week 7 the Cougars return to TDECU Stadium on Saturday night, Oct. 17, with a 6:30 p.m. CDT kickoff against Oklahoma State. The Cowboys arrive ranked No. 20 in the latest coaches poll, one of the Big 12’s two teams carrying a loss, and one spot and 117 points behind the Cougars in the poll. A road win is the sort of thing you earn. A ranked visitor on your own field, with your own crowd behind you, is the sort of thing you’re expected to take care of.
Then comes the long trip west to Utah, No. 11 and unbeaten, a week later. That’s for later. The poll is a rumor, and the schedule is the fact. For now the Cougars have 5-1, a better address, a road win in a hard town, and a home field waiting. Climbing is mostly a matter of not falling. Houston found somewhere to put its feet in Manhattan, and now it gets to stand on its own ground.
