At the end of the day a win is a win. It doesn't matter the style of the victory or the final score, it's pick up the W and move on. This weekend the Hawkeyes and Crimson Tide were amongst the most notable achievers of survive and advance.The Crimson Tide with the help of two missed field goals by David Lincoln looked to be in control and cruising towards their 8th win of the season but sometimes football takes a few crazy turns. Hesiman hopeful Mark Ingram fumbled the ball away at mid-field to give UT the ball with 3:29 to go. No big deal though, the Crimson Tide still had a 9 point lead with their defense playing soundly as usual. But Jonathan Crompton woke up and with just over 1 minute left Crompton threw a td pass to cut the lead to just 2. No big deal, Tennessee needed to get an onside kick and that almost never works... except this time of course. So with their undefeated season on the line, Bama needed David Lincoln to miss his 3rd field goal of the day and he did, blocked again. Survive and advance.
The Hawkeyes have seemingly been walking the tight rope for the last 4 weeks. This week with the score locked at 6-6 the Hawkeyes kicked the tie-breaking field goal with just under 3 minutes to go. The Hawkeyes just needed to continue to play stellar d and keep the Spartans out of the endzone like they had the first 55 minutes of the game. Or not, the Spartans scored a td to take the lead in under 90 seconds. Whoops. The Hawkeys now needed Ricky Stanzi to somehow drive the Hawkeyes 70 yards in 97 seconds. Stanzi utilized every last second on the clock when he threw the game winning 7 yard strike to Marvin McNutt. Survive and advance.
Now onto the preliminary poll for this week...
 | ||
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | |
| 2 | Florida | |
| 3 | Iowa | |
| 4 | Texas | |
| 5 | Southern Cal | |
| 6 | Boise State | |
| 7 | Oregon | |
| 8 | Cincinnati | |
| 9 | LSU |  4 |
| 10 | Houston |  1 |
| 11 | Georgia Tech | |
| 12 | TCU | 5 |
| 13 | Virginia Tech | 1 |
| 14 | Pittsburgh | |
| 15 | Oklahoma State | |
| 16 | Texas Tech | 2 |
| 17 | Penn State | 3 |
| 18 | South Carolina | 1 |
| 19 | Miami (Florida) | 9 |
| 20 | Ohio State | 4 |
| 21 | West Virginia | |
| 22 | Arizona | |
| 23 | Georgia | |
| 24 | Brigham Young | 8 |
| 25 | Oklahoma | |
| Last week's ballot | ||
Dropped Out: California (#21), Nebraska (#22), Arkansas (#23), Michigan (#25).
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