Drawing conclusions based on one weekend — in Brown’s case, two mid-week games — is not a recommended practice. Still, all eight teams have made their 2006-07 debuts, so think of this week’s Power Rankings as the jumping-off point for the season.
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| 1. | Cornell (1-0) | – | Northwestern is a bad Big Ten team, but it is still a Big Ten team, which makes Cornell’s thrilling season-opening upset win in Evanston a big deal. But did the victory come at a heavy cost to the Big Red with the injury to Adam Gore? We’ll find out this week. |
| 2. | Penn (1-2) | – | Losing to UTEP at the buzzer and failing to compete with Syracuse at the Carrier Dome aren’t cause for panic for an Ivy League team. But if Penn is to have a memorable season, it’s going to need to improve quite a bit from its performance this weekend in upstate New York. |
| 3. | Harvard (1-0) | – | The Crimson served notice that even without Matt Stehle, it’s still no pushover with a surprising home win over a Maine squad picked to finish second in the American East this season. The offense wasn’t pretty, but Harvard won the game by getting to the line. |
| 4. | Princeton (2-1) | – | There’s no shame in losing to a Loyola University team that should be one of the better mid-major programs in the nation this season. After a near-collapse against a bad VMI team, Princeton looked much better on Sunday in an easy victory over Alabama A&M. |
| 5. | Yale (1-0) | – | It’s hard to take away much of anything from an uncompetitive home game against a Division III opponent, so we’ll reserve judgment on Yale. The only real news was that Casey Hughes did not play for the Bulldogs, who’ll move on to Division I competition this week. |
| 6. | Columbia (0-1) | – | The Lions certainly weren’t the first Ivy team to get blown out at Duke. But after some respectable performances at Cameron Indoor Stadium by Princeton and Penn in recent years, a 43-point loss isn’t an encouraging way to start a crucial season for Columbia. |
| 7. | Brown (0-1) | – | Yes, a 45-34 loss at Michigan State was an encouraging — if not visually unappealing — way to open the Craig Robinson Era at Brown. But losing by double digits to a Central Michigan program coming off a four-win season — and losing Damon Huffman — isn’t good. |
| 8. | Dartmouth (0-1) | – | Terry Dunn’s Dartmouth team faced a serious challenge in its season opener: taking on an up-and-coming UMass team on the road without starters Leon Pattman and John Ball. The result was an ugly one, and an inauspicious start to the season for the Big Green. |
