I'm still not quite sure that this should be anything close to the final product. I'm pretty confident in the first 10 or so, but after that things get a bit more shaky. So fire away; your input would be greatly appreciated this week.
1 Alabama
2 Florida
3 Iowa
4 Cincinnati
5 Texas
Alabama and Florida No. 1 and 2, etc. etc. etc. I'm still obviously more sold on Iowa than most people and less sold on Texas. It's not so much a matter of being sold as much as it is that Texas is still lacking from a resume perspective; their only impressive wins are against Texas Tech and Oklahoma and there's a lot of deadweight aside from those two. Cincinnati's win over South Florida gets them into the Top 5.
6 LSU
7 Virginia Tech
8 Oregon
9 Boise State
10 Miami
LSU still has a pretty good resume, and with their only loss being to Florida they move ahead of Virginia Tech. The Hokies don't fall too far after losing to Georgia Tech because the Yellow Jackets are a good team and Virginia Tech has a nice resume aside. Yes, Oregon is ahead of Boise State because the Ducks have played a schedule better than the worst of the original Bill Snyder Era at Kansas State and Boise only defeated Tulsa by a touchdown. Miami swaggers at No. 10 for another week.
11 Georgia Tech
12 TCU
13 Southern Cal
14 Houston
15 Oklahoma State
Take the name away from the team for a minute and think about where you would put a team with this resume: Defeating San Jose State at home 56-3; defeating Ohio State on the road 18-15; losing to Washington on the road 16-13; defeating Washington State at home 27-6; defeating Cal on the road 30-3; defeating Notre Dame on the road 34-27. That's a nice enough resume, but how in the world is it Top 5 material? So Southern Cal is here. Besides the Trojans, the remainder of the Top 15 is a decent ACC team, two of the best mid-majors in the land and Oklahoma State. I look for TCU to move up more depending on how Virginia and Clemson do and once the Horned Frogs move into Mountain West play. (Things I thought I would never say ...)
16 Boston College
17 Texas Tech
18 Pittsburgh
19 South Carolina
20 Cal
Boston College? Sure. Texas Tech has begun to put together a good season and waxed Nebraska in one of the more surprising actual upsets of the weekend. Pittsburgh is probably the second-best team in the Big Least, for whatever little that's worth. South Carolina doesn't drop after keeping the game against Alabama close until late. Cal might have better wins than the Gamecocks, but their losses are far worse.
21 Arizona
22 Michigan
23 Wisconsin
24 Penn State
25 BYU
This is where the ballot goes from kind of shaky to a total toss-up. Arizona's not a bad team, so I guess they're as defensible a No. 21 as anyone else. Michigan, Wisconsin and Penn State all come from a decidedly undecided Big Ten. I might move Penn State up when they've defeated a ranked team. BYU is here because they lost so badly to a terrible Florida State team.