Tom Fornelli's College Football Power Ratings: Why Florida remains among top 12 despite ugly loss to Missouri

Meanwhile, in the power ratings, Alabama leapfrogs Georgia ahead of their pivotal SEC showdown on Saturday Oct 6, 2026 at 9:13 am ET • 6 min read Imagn Images One of the hallmarks of sports fandom these days is the compulsion to overreact to everything. The Florida Gators started the season 4-0. The Gators beat Auburn and then blew out an Ole Miss team coming off a win over LSU. The Gators were suddenly the hottest team in the country. A serious playoff contender.Then they went on the road and lost to Missouri 45-17, and they actually sucked the entire time. They were so overrated. Anybody who moved them into the top 10 in their opinion polls or power ratings is a clown and should feel stupid.When you do these power ratings, it's important to avoid overreacting to any single result. Crazy things happen in sports all the time, and typically, if the game spread is 5.5 points but the final score shows a 28-point deficit, it's an outlier result. It doesn't mean it isn't real, or that it was a fluke. It just means that, among the possible range of outcomes, the one we saw wasn't nearly as likely as many others.It doesn't mean Florida sucks. While the Gators drop a few spots in the ratings this week, their defense was already a concern last week, even though I had them at No. 9. I didn't downgrade it much this week. What was downgraded was the offense, because Missouri took away the run game, and Florida didn't have much of a counter. That's useful information. Frankly, the real takeaway I had from the game was that I hadn't given Missouri nearly enough credit. I liked the offense already, but I was far too low on their defense. What the Tigers did in that game may have produced an outlier result, but it was no fluke. As a result, they don't crack the top 12 this week, but they're hovering. And honestly, given the way things have gone for teams ranked 11th and 12th in these ratings this season, the Tigers should probably thank me for not putting them there yet. I had Penn State at No. 12 two weeks ago, and look what's happened there.Now, if you want to talk about a team that may have sucked the entire time, Penn State's the team we should be talking about! That was a big swing-and-miss on my part, but hopefully it's been corrected going forward.Title odds via DraftKings. Dropped out: Texas Tech