September
The pre season top 5 was 1. Michigan, 2. Oklahoma, 3. Notre Dame, 4. Alabama, and 5. USC. On September 5, Alabama beat LSU 24-7 and moved up to #2 in the new poll that was 1. Michigan, 2. Alabama, 3, Oklahoma, 4. Notre Dame, and 5. USC. Clemson was not ranked.
On September 12, #1 Michigan opened its season in Madison and lost to Wisconsin, 21-14. #2 Alabama lost in Birmingham to Georgia Tech, 24-21. By beating LSU 27-9, Notre Dame leapfrogged Oklahoma, who beat Wyoming 37-20, into the #1 spot. #4 USC beat Tennessee 43-7 so they also vaulted over Oklahoma to #2. Georgia at #4 and Penn State at #5 replace Michigan and Alabama in the top 5.
On September 19, #1 Notre Dame lost at #11 Michigan 25-7. #4 Georgia lost at unranked Clemson, 13-3. Thus, USC moved up to #1, Oklahoma #2, Penn State #3, Texas joined the top five at #4, and Pittsburgh moved up to #5.
On September 26 in a 1 vs. 2 showdown in Los Angeles, USC scored in the final seconds to nip Oklahoma, 28-24. Thus, Oklahoma slipped to #5 while Penn State, Texas and Pittsburgh were number 2, 3, and 4.
Read more about this topic: 1981 NCAA Division I-A Football Season
Famous quotes containing the word september:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Like other cities created overnight in the Outlet, Woodward acquired between noon and sunset of September 16, 1893, a population of five thousand; and that night a voluntary committee on law and order sent around the warning, “if you must shoot, shoot straight up!””
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)