Table Legend

Rewards standings before and after the bowl games.

Commentary: Rewards matched the top four in both final polls, and listed #5 Ohio State as its #6 team, so the average ranking for the top 5 was only off by 0.2 on average - the lowest such value since 1990! Stanford, listed as #11 before they defeated Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl, and that moved them up to #4 in the final Rewards ranking. (Missouri was Rewards' #4 team, before the post season, but their loss to Iowa plummeted them down to #15.) The only real "outlier" was Central Florida, even at 11-3, Rewards only ranked them as #35, though they were #21/#20 in the polls. (The voters thought more of their 10-6 victory over 6-7 Georgia, than Rewards did!) Arkansas' loss to Ohio State also dropped them from #5 to #11 in the Rewards polls, and the Buckeyes moved up from #16.