Table Legend

Rewards standings before and after the bowl games.

Commentary: Rewards corrrectly matched the top 2 teams (in both polls), and agreed with which teams belonged in the top 10, just in a slightly different order. Besides #2 Clemson, Rewards downgraded the ACC: ranking #15 UNC as the 28th best team, and #14 Florida State as the 24th. It also placed Northwestern (10-3) as the #11 team, with its opening day, home win over #3 Stanford bolstering their 'resume'; however, after their 45-6 bowl game loss to Tennessee (9-4), the Wildcats were voted #23/#22. (The Volunteers were #23 according to the Rewards system, and the pollsters had them as #22/#23 - almost identical to Northwestern in the final polls, though Tennessee had one more loss.)