 |
||
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas |
 2 |
| 2 | Alabama |
2 |
| 3 | Florida |
 2 |
| 4 | Penn State |
1 |
| 5 | California |
3 |
| 6 | LSU |
4 |
| 7 | Boise State | |
| 8 | Mississippi |
3 |
| 9 | Cincinnati |
6 |
| 10 | Miami (Florida) |
7 |
| 11 | Virginia Tech |
7 |
| 12 | TCU |
3 |
| 13 | Houston | |
| 14 | North Carolina |
7 |
| 15 | Oregon State | |
| 16 | Kansas |
7 |
| 17 | Missouri | |
| 18 | Florida State | |
| 19 | Brigham Young |
13 |
| 20 | Oklahoma |
1 |
| 21 | Michigan |
1 |
| 22 | Pittsburgh |
2 |
| 23 | Washington | |
| 24 | Southern Cal |
22 |
| 25 | Ohio State |
5 |
| Last week’s ballot | ||
Dropped Out: Utah (#12), Georgia Tech (#14), Nebraska (#16).
Not too much to add here, though it is starting to be difficult to reward teams for victories over specific teams and penalize others for losses. Do I honestly think Florida State is better than Oklahoma, in a power poll sense? Not really, but FSU has played the better schedule and gets more credit for thrashing BYU, who beat OU, than OU does for thrashing whoever it has played over the last two weeks. I think Southern Cal has a lot of problems that getting Matt Barkley back won’t fix (with QB coach Jim Bates calling the plays, another guy named offensive coordinator, and Pete Carroll — coupled with the vacuum left by no Sarkisian/Kiffin — do you think USC might have too many cooks in the offensive kitchen?). And then with Boise-Cal-LSU I kind of waffle: I want to reward Boise, but the Oregon win doesn’t look as great in hindsight, they let Fresno back into the game, and the other teams have looked pretty solid. Hard to say. (And LSU’s win over Washington looks pretty good now.)
The most intriguing game to me is one where I didn’t quite know how to rank either team: Virginia Tech vs. Miami. I have VT ranked higher than some other one-loss teams. I do think Nebraska is better, and getting statistically buzzsawed by Alabama while keeping the game close isn’t bad for a team a lot of folks feel is playing the best in the country. Miami has looked great against FSU and Georgia Tech, but it’s not clear what that means. We’ll find out a lot this week.
Last, the movement at the top: Texas and ‘Bama over Florida. This is maybe ephemeral, but, while neither Texas nor Florida dominated, I liked Texas’s win over Texas Tech a lot more than I liked Florida’s win over Tennessee. And Alabama has looked consistent. More on UT-UF later.