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Week 2 of the college football season has come and gone, but it wasn’t a necessarily strong week for many members of the Group of Five.
Outside of Army’s near defeat of Michigan, the G5 had a rough showing in Week 2. Cincinnati was no match for Ohio State, USF has scored a combined 10 points in back-to-back losses to P5 opponents and Central Michigan was the second consecutive G5 school that Wisconsin shut out.
San Diego State did knock off UCLA, Coastal Carolina defeated Kansas and Hawaii topped Oregon State as the lone G5 wins over Power Five teams. UCLA has now lost two straight to G5 programs, and you can make a case that Kansas and Oregon State are arguably two of the worst the P5 has to offer.
The end result is a minor shakeup in the latest Underdog Top 10, where our panel of voters rank the top teams in the G5. You will immediately notice that this is a two conference race after a couple weeks of play. Below are the results after Week 2.
Underdog Top 10 - Week 2
| Rank | Team | Points | Conference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Team | Points | Conference |
| 1 | Boise State | 126 (9) | Mountain West |
| 2 | UCF | 120 (4) | American |
| 3 | Memphis | 98 | American |
| 4 | Hawaii | 82 | Mountain West |
| 5 | Army | 56 | Independent |
| 6 | Utah State | 42 | Mountain West |
| 7 | Wyoming | 38 | Mountain West |
| 8 | SMU | 35 | American |
| T-9 | Tulane | 34 | American |
| T-9 | Cincinnati | 34 | American |
*Numbers in parentheses are the number of first place votes*
Biggest jump: Army Black Knights
Largest fall: Cincinnati Bearcats
Boise State continues to be on top of our Underdog Top 10, garnering nine of the 13 first-place votes. The Broncos moved up to No. 22 in both the Coaches and AP Polls, and make up just one of two G5 teams to do so. The start of this year’s G5 rankings look similar to a year ago, when Boise State held the top spot for the first couple weeks of the 2018 season.
The UCF Knights remained second in our voting, despite being ranked higher in both the national polls. UCF climbed up a spot in the AP Top 25 to No. 17, and in the Coaches Poll to No. 16. Only one of our voters placed them outside the top two spots as they picked up the other four first-place votes. The Knights are coming off a 48-14 thrashing of FAU, as Lane Kiffin’s bunch continues to spiral downhill following a successful 2017 season.
The Memphis Tigers were the only other team to be featured on every voter’s ballot, ranging from second to fifth by all. Several other programs were featured on just about everyone’s ballot, including Army, Hawaii, Utah State and Wyoming.
The Mountain West and American Athletic Conference have taken a stranglehold of the rankings as Army is the lone team not to come from one of the two conferences. The rest of the G5 conferences did not fare well in the voting. The Sun Belt Conference received a combined 10 votes between App State, Arkansas State and Georgia State, while Marshall garnered the only votes for Conference USA. No team from the Mid-American Conference received a single vote.
We could see some movement at the top of our order as UCF will host Stanford, arguably their toughest opponent of the season, for the first time in school history. Meanwhile for Hawaii, they can knock off a Pac-12 opponent for the third consecutive week when they travel to take on Washington.