CBS Sports 128 rankings: Nebraska enters top 10, West Virginia makes massive jump – CBS sports.com (blog)

At the end of a college football season, nearly every national title contender can look back at those one or two weeks that made or broke their campaign. If a team finishes with 10-12 regular season wins, there is a very good chance that at some point, usually in conference play, those national title hopes were hanging in the balance. Champions find ways to win those games, and if a team is not as lucky, those losses will haunt fans for decades.

Ohio State Buckeyes
and
Clemson Tigers
needed overtime to remain undefeated on Saturday, and
Louisville Cardinals
was probably much closer to defeat than many realize thanks to a roughing the kicker penalty on
Duke Blue Devils
that set up the Cardinals’ final touchdown.
Nebraska Cornhuskers
did a good job to get out ahead of
Indiana Hoosiers
but still had to sweat out a one-score victory on the road to remain unbeaten.

We’ve reached that point of the season where the fire of conference play will begin to burn those on the edge of the playoff race. The CBS Sports 128 does a great job of painting the full college football landscape, but it also shows the current stock of these playoff hopefuls at the season’s midpoint.

College football experts from CBS Sports — and for the first time this year, partner 247Sports — contribute ballots each week, which are averaged together for our rankings. You can see the top-25 below, and 26-128 on our rankings page.

Just outside the top 25,
Southern California Trojans
moved up six spots from No. 33 to No. 27, and
LSU Tigers
continued its slow creep back up the polls after a second-straight high-scoring victory under interim coach Ed Orgeron.
Washington State Cougars
, up six spots to No. 29, is another team to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. Given the Cougars have started Pac-12 play, it’s possible they could have as much on the line in Apple Cup as
Washington Huskies
.

Biggest movers

• 
  West Virginia Mountaineers
  (+8): No one in our expert picks had West Virginia dominating
  Texas Tech Red Raiders
  , so this could be a course correction on the part of those voters. The Mountaineers still have the toughest parts of the schedule left to play, but the body of work is worthy of a top-15 ranking.
• 
  Colorado Buffaloes
  (+8): A slight downgrade following the loss to USC was immediately eliminated by a very impressive win against
  Arizona State Sun Devils
  .
• Ole Miss (-10): The Rebels are wildly talented, and I was among those figuring it would be enough to sustain a winning streak after two early-season losses to good teams.
  Arkansas Razorbacks
  exposed the narrow margin between 10 wins and eight wins in the SEC West, and the Rebels’ slide has now started.
• Miami (-10): The Hurricanes are hurting at a lot of key positions and got outmanned at home by
  North Carolina Tar Heels
  . Tough time for Mark Richt to be dealing with injuries with
  Virginia Tech Hokies
  is coming up on Thursday.
• Virginia Tech (-12): … but that Hokies team also just fell from No. 16 to No. 28 after losing at
  Syracuse Orange
  . The ACC Coastal is a mess.

Check out the rest of the CBS Sports 128: Teams ranked 26-128