After handing Oregon its worst home loss in 30 years, No. 10 Utah was bound to make a jump in the AP poll. Now with two big wins on the season (the first being over Michigan), the Utes are in prime position to make some noise in the Pac-12, but can they be the best team in the country?
Well, according to Knoxville News Sentinel sports columnist John Adams, they just might be. Adams, who has a weekly vote in the AP Top 25 college football poll, voted Utah No. 1 on his ballot, the lone first-place vote the Utes received this week, despite sitting nine spots below. This was the first time Utah has received a regular-season, first-place vote in the AP Poll — ever.
To find out the method to his madness, The Daily Utah Chronicle sat down with Adams to discuss his reasoning behind dubbing Utah the best team in all the land after four weeks.
Plain and simple — why did you pick Utah No. 1 on your ballot?
JA: I’ve voted in the poll a lot of years, and one of my main criteria is wins over good teams. And also, I don’t do my polls the way a lot of people do. If somebody is No. 1 one week and they win the next week, they are still No. 1 — I don’t do that at all. In fact, you’re instruction is to don’t hesitate to change things up week to week. So I’m not married to one team. It’s all about on performance and strength of schedule.
That strength of schedule changes every week. The week before, I had Ole Miss at No. 1 — two blowout wins, but more importantly, a win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa. If it turns out that Alabama is not that good over the course of the season, that would affect how I regard Ole Miss. [In Week 4] Ole Miss struggled against Vanderbilt, so I took some points for that.
But Utah, just the fact that it destroyed Oregon, which I think is a good team, I can’t remember anybody beating Oregon like that since it’s been good. It may have lost a game or two, but I don’t remember that badly of a loss. Then the win over Michigan is more significant to me now because of Michigan’s win over Brigham Young.
That’s pretty much it. I get a lot of flak for my ballots because they’re not conventional, but that’s just the way I do it.
You ranked Utah over teams such as Ohio State, Michigan State and TCU, who top most ballots across the country. What do you say to people who knock you for placing the Utes over those programs?
JA: I’m more incredulous that anyone would vote Ohio State No. 1 right now. Ohio State was No. 1 in my preseason poll, I don’t see why anyone would have voted them anything less than No. 1. But they don’t have a single good win. They struggled over Northern Illinois, wasn’t even impressed with them against Virginia Tech, so I just don’t see putting them No. 1.
If Utah keeps winning, it’s going to be really high in my poll. And one of the things I looked at was that Michigan State right now is a consensus top-five team on most ballots. It barely beat Oregon in East Lansing. I think if (Oregon’s) quarterback Vernon Adams never had a broken finger, he would’ve hit the wide-open receiver for a for-sure touchdown that would have given Oregon the game. I weigh that heavily, too — the fact that Utah comes out and beats Oregon easily.
I try not to distinguish against teams that have more name recognition. Some people, I think, there’s a stigma there, just because maybe people don’t perceive Utah in the same if they would Southern Cal. Let’s say Southern Cal had just beaten Oregon by that margin, or Southern Cal had beaten Michigan. I really think it would’ve been No. 1 on a lot of ballots.
It’s No. 1 right now, but what will keep Utah from finishing there, or at least floating around in the top 10?
JA: I really felt that going into the season that the top 3 teams in the Pac-12, which is obviously a very difficult conference, I saw three teams — Southern Cal, UCLA and Oregon. Southern Cal has already stumbled, I was surprised by that outcome. I thought Arizona State and Arizona would be really good too, but I guess I thought Utah was an 8-4 type of team.
I know Utah lost some from its defense last season, lost a good pass rush, but it has some back. I see it as a solid, well-balanced team. A team that can throw some, run some, has a pretty good defense. In the end, I think that Utah, since watching it since it’s entered the Pac-12, it played some of the established powers in that league very tough.
I think I had Utah maybe 20th in preseason, and that was based mainly, I just thought it would have a hard time against that schedule. But now that it’s already beaten Oregon, if it can beat Oregon, it’s going to give all those teams trouble — UCLA, USC, Stanford. That’s a really tough league.
I remember watching Utah last year. I like the way Utah plays. It can play really tough in big games, it’s a team that I think plays with a lot of confidence. Against that schedule, if it keeps winning, obviously I think everybody will rank Utah highly.
Final thought on the Utes?
JA: I just think Utah fans should be really excited about their team, because they’ve had two big wins and they’ve got a lot of opportunities to, I think, to impress more voters than me.
@GriffDoug