I've tried to incorporate more resume than subjective in this one, but with all of the nuttiness so far, I feel like I've probably missed something here. Let me know if something is all out of whack, and just know that I am not going solely on a resume basis. I just don't have the time to parse through all 120 teams' merits, so I'm not going to pretend like I can and produce a resume ballot that makes perfect sense.
1. Florida
2. Texas
3. Alabama
4. Virginia Tech
5. Boise State
The top three have distanced themselves from the rest, and they really could be in any order as far as I'm concerned. For now, I'm keeping them in the same order as I've had them in the past. Because Alabama is a part of that top group, it's really hard to complain about Virginia Tech's close loss, and the wins over Nebraska and Miami look very good. Boise State gets to be at five for now, thanks to Oregon coming back with a vengeance, but their schedule will probably keep me from voting them any higher on future ballots.
6. Houston
7. LSU
8. Cincinnati
9. TCU
10. Oklahoma
The teams in the 6-9 spots are all in the category of "earned their way here" thanks to nice victories over multiple Big Six conference opponents. They are arranged in order of who has the best set of such wins so far. I don't really think LSU has played like a top ten team, or Cincy or TCU for that matter, but this is a vote on pelts on the wall. Oklahoma is coming back up because I think the BYU loss is probably a fluke.
11. Auburn
12. Nebraska
13. Ohio State
14. Penn State
15. Georgia
Auburn has a nice set of wins, so why not? They haven't played anyone as good as BYU though, so they're behind OU for now. The next four teams are all one loss teams that are pretty good, and they are arranged in order of impressiveness of loss. Yeah, I know. Sue me.
16. USC
17. Iowa
18. Oklahoma State
19. Oregon
20. Michigan
Okay, so now we're at the section of, "I know these teams need to be in, but heck if I know in what order." Thoughts? Objections? It's mostly guessing from here on out.
21. South Carolina
22. Ole Miss
23. Miami
24. Cal
25. BYU
Should I even have Ole Miss ranked? Should South Carolina move up or down? What about BYU? This is the sort of week where being a pollster sucks.