8+ Win Teams:

UCF
USF
Memphis
Clemson
NC State
Louisville
Miami
Virginia Tech
Oklahoma
TCU
Oklahoma State
Ohio State
Michigan State
Penn State
Michigan
Wisconsin
Northwestern
Florida Atlantic
Florida International
North Texas
UAB
Southern Mississippi
Notre Dame
Army
Ohio
Toledo
Central Michigan
Northern Illinois
Boise State
Fresno State
San Diego State
Stanford
Washington
Washington State
USC
Georgia
South Carolina
Auburn
Alabama
LSU
Mississippi State
Troy
Appalachian State

Here's your college football royalty.  These are this year's winners.  Never mind the national championship race, if your team has twice as many wins as losses, you're doing something right.  A lot of these guys have been here before so it's not surprising, like Notre Dame and Michigan.  But I want to give a shout out to the squads nobody thought had a chance -- UCF is 11-0, when two years ago they went 0-12.  That's just amazing.  Fresno State had a similar turnaround.

Perhaps even more impressive is UAB at 8-4.  This is a team that didn't even exist last year.  Its football team had been abolished.  And yet here it is, among the winningest teams in the country, one year later.  What on Earth are they eating down there?

South Carolina reaching 8 wins after the retirement of Steve Spurrier is something I thought would never happen, so my hats off to them.  Washington State used to be real losers, but now they're winners, all thanks to Coach Leach.

Lane Kiffen has produced an instant turnaround for woebegone Florida Atlantic.  In just one year it now ranks among the elites.  Army, with its strict recruiting standards, is amazing to have reached 8 wins, perhaps even 9 if it beats Navy at the end of the regular season.

You'd have to be a blithering idiot to fire any coach in this group, which thankfully hasn't happened.  7-5 coaches haven't been safe this year, but 8-4 is just a bridge too far (unlike Frank Solich, who was fired from Nebraska after a 10 win season. . .)

Texas' honor is all riding on TCU, which could still win the Big 12 Championship next week.  North Texas is also doing its part, which is playing for the Conference USA championship next week.  I called our state the state of shame at the beginning of the season, but so long as we have TCU it's not all bad.  North Texas is usually horrible so it's nice to have them suddenly in our corner this year as well.

Imouto Sae Ireba Ii would be great if it weren't so vulgar.  The brilliant writing is mixed together with long discussions about poop.  (No, I'm not making this up.)  Their hard work is intermixed with endless alcohol binges.  And the touching relationship webs are interleaved with To Love ru levels of nudity and even straight out sexual harassment/assault.  This is one of the funniest shows out there, but the grungy aspects drag it down.  In a way I felt the same about Tenshi no 3p, it just had too much in-your-face loli porn getting in the way of an otherwise good story.  Sometimes less is more folks!

It's okay when To Love ru does it because it's an over the top comedy that was never meant to be taken seriously and takes ecchi to ludicrous levels.  It's a series that can only be made once because To Love ru already cornered the market on the entire genre.  Imouto Sae Ireba Ii needed to steer in a more realistic and subtle direction if it wanted to compete.

Hopefully 2018 will fill up the 7 remaining slots in my top anime rankings.  If there aren't enough good new shows even at the end of next year, I'll just add in some ghibli movies or something and be done with it.  The top 200 anime sounds a lot better than 'the top 193 anime' of all time, so the sooner we get there the better.  Who knows, if Imouto Sae Ireba gets a second season that might be enough to put it over the top.  Made in Abyss is getting a 2nd season, but there's no way I'm making that mess a ranked show no matter how many seasons it gets.