Tennessee football did not get any benefit from beating the Chattanooga Mocs in our SEC Power Rankings. The Volunteers remain at the bottom.
A week with so many teams in the Southeastern Conference facing FCS schools always meant that there wouldn’t be too many changes in our SEC Power Rankings. And that holds true for Tennessee football, which we’ll get to soon enough.
However, while the changes were minimal, the tiers have widened. It’s hard to separate some teams at this point, particularly in the middle of the pack, but lots of that will change this weekend, as the season really starts to begin.
So think of this week’s SEC Power Rankings as a set of rankings as to how each team in the league looked in their tune-up games. That’s what the first three weeks are largely made up of, with some exceptions, before the gauntlet begins.
Those tune-up games, however, don’t always turn out to be tune-up games, as people on Rocky Top now realize all too well. And they can certainly set the tone for the rest of the season. But the upcoming gauntlet can change that.
Still, this week’s list won’t look much different from last week. As usual, we put emphasis on schedule strength for teams and how they looked in their most recent games. Both things are a big deal, but since it’s so early, we do take the whole season into account.
And it’s also worth noting that, as usual, we place very little emphasis on how good anybody looked against an FCS school. That does a program no benefit. Looking bad against one can tank them, though. Those blowouts are why so few teams gained anything this past week.
Anyway, who moved a spot or two? How many teams stayed the same? What did the weekend do for the Vols? Take a look at all of that here in our SEC Power Rankings following Week Three of the 2019 college football season.