Lineal Top 25: #2 Texas beats #1 Oklahoma State!!!

I neglected to keep track of the Lineal Top 25 for one week and looked what happened—I didn't realize that last Saturday's clash between Oklahoma State and Texas was a battle between #1 and #2!

You see, two weeks ago Oklahoma State knocked Missouri out of the top spot, putting the Tigers at #2. The next week, Texas beat Missouri, taking over the #2 spot. That set up a quite rare #1 vs. #2 contest! Normally the #1 team has just defeated the #2 team, and they don't play again. But since Texas moved in and played the Cowboys next, we witnessed a rare case where a team moves from #2 to #1 on the all-time Lineal top 25!

And that wasn't all for the top ten; there were several other top ten clashes, mostly because of the preponderance of SEC teams at the top of the chart. #5 Florida beat #6 Kentucky, so neither team moved; likewise #4 Alabama defeated #10 Tennessee, leaving matters unchanged. But LSU and Georgia traded places with the Bulldogs' win, and both were pushed down a spot as Mississippi beat Arkansas.

Arkansas is just 3-5, but recall how they got so high: they beat LSU last year when LSU was #1. LSU in turn had taken the title from Auburn, who had beaten Florida, who had defeated Ohio State in the national championship game of the 2006 season. Ohio State, interestingly, took the title from 2005 national champ Texas...so here we are, a little over two years later, and the lineal crown is back in Texas' hands.

Here is the current state of the Lineal Top 25:

Week 9 (games thru 10/25/2008)
lw  new Team                    rec  last week's result
2    1. Texas                   8-0  beat #1 Oklahoma State
1    2. Oklahoma State          7-1  lost to #2 Texas
3    3. Missouri                6-2
4    4. Alabama                 8-0  beat #10 Tennessee
5    5. Florida                 6-1  beat #6 Kentucky
6    6. Kentucky                5-2  lost to #5 Florida
     7. Mississippi             4-4  beat #7 Arkansas
7    8. Arkansas                3-5  lost to Mississippi
9    9. Georgia                 7-1  beat #8 LSU 
8   10. LSU                     5-2  lost to #9 Georgia
10  11. Tennessee               3-5  lost to #4 Alabama
11  12. Mississippi State       3-5 
    13. Duke                    4-3  beat #12 Vanderbilt
12  14. Vanderbilt              5-3  lost to Duke
    15. West Virginia           5-2  beat #13 Auburn
13  16. Auburn                  4-4  lost to West Virginia
14  17. Utah                    8-0 
24  18. Penn State              9-0  beat #15 Ohio State
15  19. Ohio State              7-2  lost to #24 Penn State 
16  20. Michigan State          7-2 
17  21. Virginia                5-3 
18  22. North Carolina          6-2 
19  23. Notre Dame              5-2 
20  24. Minnesota               7-1 
    25. Wisconsin               4-4 beat #21 Illinois