After each week of college football action publisher Justin Rowland is surveying the landscape across the SEC and the rest of the country to measure the fallout and track the big news.

There will always be an emphasis on what it means for Kentucky, so without further ado here are reflections on Week 2, aside from UK's 35-28 win against Missouri.

... First things first. I was so wrong about this week's slate. When I looked up and down the schedule it looked horrible. The Iowa-Iowa State game looked good, but I didn't give Oregon any chance to win straight up as a two touchdown dog at Ohio State.

... Of course, Ohio State lost to Oregon, and it really shocked me. If you had told me before the game that CJ Stroud would complete 35 passes, throw for 484 yards, and three touchdowns, I'd say OSU would have covered. If you told me Oregon's QB would complete less than 50% of his passes and the Ducks' leading receiver would have 34 yards, I'd feel even stronger about that pick. But Oregon made big plays when they needed to be made and held on in a very impressive win because they were also missing a couple of their top players. OSU is supposed to have the nation's top receiving corps and they it's probably the best, but otherwise this team just looked like a step down from previous iterations of the program. They weren't getting a ton of push in the run game and they weren't as dominant as usual on defense.

Ohio State can still make the playoff. If they run the table the rest of the way and beat Iowa or Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship they still might have a case. But the way this team looked, that doesn't appear likely.

I've long assumed that Ryan Day would be a fantastic hire at OSU, because he's won so many games and recruited as such a high level since taking over in Columbus. And the last two guys OSU hired were Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer, with both enjoying wild success there. Now, Day may still prove to be the same kind of coach those guys were, but in two of their last three games they were blown out by Alabama and then lost at home to Oregon. They were on the ropes against Minnesota on the road for much of the third game in that stretch. Again, no reason for Day to get too much heat over this, but I'll admit to feeling a little less sure of how their future with him will go.

... None of this bodes well for anybody knocking off Alabama this year. Because that's really the main question we should be asking every year as long as Nick Saban is there: Who can beat Alabama? They've won the title just about every other year, on average, so I'll keep asking that one.

No, I do not see a team that I believe would beat Alabama right now. I think Georgia can. If they get some guys back and develop the offense, I do believe this UGA team can legitimately compete with Alabama and it won't surprise me if they play not once, but twice. UGA's in great shape for the playoff and it'll be a surprise if Bama's not there. I don't think Georgia's offense is good enough at the moment to knock off the Tide.

But I think Alabama's offense is less than it has been recently. That shouldn't come as a surprise given who they lost from last year's team, but there's something about them that gives me the strong feeling that they aren't invincible. That's in spite of two blowouts to start the year. The offense is just not the finely tuned machine or completely overpowering force that it had become. But of course the defense is improved and outstanding so they never let up.

... Speaking of UGA, backup Stetson Bennett was 10/12 for 288 yards and five touchdowns in a 56-7 rout of a decent UAB team. That's as good a game as he's ever going to play, spelling JT Daniels. While it's not an SEC team the Blazers do play defense so even though it's one of the nation's top teams, I was actually expecting this to be a pretty low scoring ugly game.

... Mississippi State-NC State was one of the games I was very excited to see. MSU dominated with its defensive line and totally threw the Wolfpack out of whack.

Think about how the SEC-ACC series has gone this year. Pitt eventually did pull ahead and beat Tennessee but otherwise Alabama waxed Miami, Georgia beat Clemson, Ole Miss dominated Louisville, and MSU worked an NC State team that should play in a solid bowl game.

The SEC has always been the better league but the gap has really widened in recent years. The average SEC team's talent level is just significantly better, and that's not only true for teams at the top of each league. It's honestly tough to see that ever changing, although coaches will still have something to do with it.

... Texas A&M was a 17-point favorite at Colorado and while I'm not a betting guy, much less an expert, that was one that I didn't like. While A&M has really climbed the SEC ladder, they rarely look dominant when I'm watching them. In fact, I've called them the most underwhelming really good program in the country. They find ways to win but it's often not pretty and looks like it's harder than it should be. A&M only rushed for 97 yards and the Buffs kept Zach Calzada under 50% passing. I think it was a bad week for the Aggies, but this does not appear to have the makings of a team that's prepared to win the West.

... Hat tip to Murray State. The Racers were tied 7-7 at halftime on the road at Cincinnati before the Bearcats won the second half 35-0. That's when depth gets you but a nice start that had my attention.

... The Luck of the Irish has been alive this season in narrow wins against Florida State and now Toledo, Vince Marrow's alma mater. The Rockets had the lead in the fourth quarter but couldn't seal it. Notre Dame will win a lot of games this year because of superior talent against most teams on its schedule but I don't think you have to worry about this ND team sneaking into the playoff. They get a negative score in style points even with a 2-0 record.

... I wouldn't have been shocked by any outcome in the most anticipated Cy-Hawk (Iowa-Iowa State) that I can ever remember, pitting two top ten teams against each other. But in hindsight Iowa winning by ten is an outcome we should have expected based on how each team looked the previous week. One of the biggest impacts of the outcome is for the Big XII conference's playoff forecast. It may now be Oklahoma or they're out. Sound familiar? As for Iowa, the Hawkeyes could be one of the nation's surprise team. Some AP voters have the Hawkeyes in the top ten. I believe I saw one voter had them No. 3, on the basis of wins so far. Dismantling a preseason top 25 Indiana team and winning on the road against a top ten archrival. I wouldn't go No. 3, but they'd be in my top ten. This is clearly one of Ferentz's best teams and they've had some good ones. Iowa passed for only 106 yards but played good defense and dominated the middle 30 minutes of the game.

... My early expectation is for a Penn State-Iowa Big Ten Championship Game.

... It appears Dan Mullen has started the wrong quarterback, again. I'm surprised that such an accomplished wizard with quarterbacks has tended to pick the wrong starter. He had Feleipe Franks over Kyle Trask until Kentucky forced him to reconsider, and now he's had Emory Jones ahead of Anthony Richardson. It's understandable that Jones would get the shot but Richardson looks so incredibly explosive. He can be a problem. He's a big play just waiting to happen and should have the SEC very concerned.

... Stanford 42-28 over USC and Clay Helton fired. Wow. Didn't see that coming. I wasn't much higher on this USC team than anybody else but everyone has said that Stanford will be awful. I've thought this was a three or four win team and after losing at Kansas State 24-7 last week that seemed reasonable. I was honestly surprised USC gave Helton so long but they aren't quite as overbearing on coaches as a lot of SEC schools, and Helton was winning just enough to just hang on. I know there have been early names mentioned as possibilities but we'll wait and see until more comes out. I think you can make a strong case for USC as the most attractive head coaching position in college football. You're in one of the world's largest cities, you're not the biggest show in town but you have as good a talent base as any program in the country, and you own it more than the schools in Texas or Florida own theirs. Great tradition, prestigious university, they give you more leash than Alabama, but everything you have to win at the very highest level. There are cases to be made for other schools but that's convincing for me.

... Arkansas 40-21 against Texas was shocking, even though I had written beforehand that I wouldn't be surprised if it were a very close game late. This is a bad wake-up call for Steve Sarkisian, who does not have elite talent at some offensive positions but will now be sucked into a seemingly endless cycle of negativity that has pervaded Longhorn football for a long time now. It will be interesting to see what direction UT goes after this "here we go again" moment. Texas is moving to the SEC in the near future and Arkansas was picked by many to be last in the West. Maybe Arkansas will finish much higher than that in the West. I know I like Sam Pittman a lot as a coach. I've called him a practical guy rather than a zealot committed to any specific thing and I like that about him. His teams are opportunistic and play hard. That was a great under the radar hire in hindsight. I think we know very little about how the SEC West is going to play out. I think after Alabama you'd have to say 2-7 could finish in any order.

... South Carolina barely survived what should be a bad ECU team 20-17 and Tennessee lost at home to Pitt. I'm of the mind that Tennessee is going to end up being better than South Carolina, which would bode well for a 4-0 game against Florida but could mean a closer than expected game against the Vols.

... I spend way too much time worrying about the little intricacies and seeming inconsistencies in the AP and Coaches Polls but its a fun past time. I'll be honest. Most of the time when Kentucky fans tell me the 'Cats are underrated I either roll my eyes or shrug and think it's a fan feeling like a fan should. But I really think Kentucky is being grossly underrated. I'm not sure they're going to win nine regular season games, but this team has looked good with the potential to be really good. To be 39th, in others receiving votes, with an AP voter high of 23 (Dave Reardon from Hawaii), is really strange. They're behind Texas and well behind Indiana. That just speaks to some voters not being able to adjust their priors based on real game action. Votes for Texas and USC were unbelievable as well.