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)
“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
—Macmillan’s Magazine (London, September 1871)
“April is in my mistress’ face,
And July in her eyes hath place,
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.”
—Unknown. Subject #4: July Subject #5: September Subject #6: December. All Seasons in One. . .
Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, The. E. K. Chambers, comp. (1932)