HBCU Football: Consensus Top 10 Teams

HOUSTON -- Entering Week 3, four ballots - HBCU Legends, Black College Plus (BC+), BOXTOROW (Coaches), and Black College Football Poll (BCFP) - all agree that South Carolina State is the top football team in the country. The consensus for the following four teams would be Prairie View A&M, Alabama State, Jackson State, and Delaware State, though not necessarily in that order.

The BOXTOROW Coaches Poll was the only one to list Alabama State at No. 2, while the other three place the Hornets at No. 3. Prairie View A&M received No. 2 rankings from the HBCU Legends and BC+ model, but the BOXTOROW and BCFP notch the Panthers at No. 4.

Jackson State climbs to No. 2 in the BCFP, No. 3 in BOXTOROW, and two No. 4 spots with HBCU Legends and BC+.

Alabama State, Prairie View A&M and Jackson State occupy places two, three and four on all four lists — in three different orders. Still, no list puts any of them outside that box.

Delaware State rounded out the top five teams in all four polls at No. 5.

From there, chaos reigns, with most rankings placing NCCU, Grambling State, and Alcorn State in the bottom half of the top ten teams, while Texas Southern, Alabama A&M, Morgan State, Bethune-Cookman, and Howard peek into the second tier.

Ninth for the coaches, eighth for BCFP, unranked by BC+ (roughly fourteenth), and unranked on the ballot. A spread of four places.

The Bulldogs are 2-1 with a 30-3 win over Tennessee State, a 38-23 win over Miles, and a 63-3 loss at Georgia. Voters count two wins on AAMU’s résumé, but the BC+ model counts who they played. It appears their fall to Howard in Week 0’s MEAC/SWAC Challenge Kick-Off weighs heavily in the analytics, but not with human voters.

BC+ has Bethune-Cookman ranking eighth, on a 1-1 record whose win came against non-scholarship Stetson — the placement the model is least sure of, and one already knocked from fifth to eighth by a prior correction this week.

BCFP alone ranks Morgan State tenth at 2-1. The coaches have them first out by three points.

HBCU Legends as the Tigers (1-2) at No. 6 and the BC+ analytics place them at No. 9). However, TSU is unranked by both the BCFP and BOXTOROW polls after two consecutive losses to Prairie View A&M and UTEP. The victory against NCCU carries weight for HBCU Legends.

Coach Dishman’s team is an outlier. Let’s see how they rebound from the upcoming bye week and play Alcorn State at the Reservation in Week 4.

Despite disagreements in the bottom half of the polls, a pattern emerges. The BOXTOROW Coaches and Black College Football Polls rewarded winning records. The analytics and HBCU Legends focus on the quality of opponents beaten by the ranked teams.

The human polls note Alabama A&M (2-1) and Morgan State (2-1) and leave out Texas Southern (1-2) and Bethune-Cookman (1-1).

The model and HBCU Legends rankings do the opposite, listing the 1-2 and 1-1 teams and leaving out the 2-1s.

Neither ranking system is being unreasonable at this point of the season. After playing three games and conference schedules just kicking off, we have a small sample to evaluate teams.

Thus, the overall picture remains incomplete. As more SWAC and MEAC clashes happen in October, we’ll start to see separation.

Though two things are for certain: 1. South Carolina State is unanimously the HBCUs' best team. And, Delaware State is considered the fifth-best in the nation. We’ll see over the next four weeks how Prairie View A&M, Jackson State, and Alabama State will slug it out with divisional foes.

Keep an eye on Alcorn State and Grambling State in the SWAC and Morgan State and Howard in the MEAC. Something tells me they are going to make moves, trying to creep through the backdoor hoping to ruin a few Celebration Bowl dreams along the way.