To assemble this top 25, I primarily looked at teams' victories over ranked teams and their losses. I don't want to penalize teams too much for their schedules, because I think it's better to have played a good team and lost than to have played a worse team and won. In most cases, anyway.
1. Auburn
2. Oregon
3. Wisconsin
4. Alabama
5. Boise State
6. TCU
7. Ohio State
8. Nebraska
9. Michigan State
10. Stanford
Auburn has four wins over ranked opponents; no one else has more than two. Oregon holds on at two thanks to having beat Stanford and laying waste to everyone else. Wisconsin and Nebraska are the only teams besides Auburn to own multiple wins over ranked teams, but the Badgers don't have the dead weight of a loss to Texas dragging them down. Alabama jumps the two non-AQ teams because it owns a win (Arkansas) better than BSU's and TCU's best wins (VT, Baylor) while its only loss (South Carolina) is to a much better team than the next best squad each has faced (Oregon State in both cases).Am I wrong for having Ohio State above Nebraska? I think I might be.
11. Utah
12. Oklahoma
13. Missouri
14. Arizona
15. LSU
16. Iowa
17. Arkansas
18. South Carolina
19. Mississippi State
20. Oklahoma State
21. Baylor
22. Virginia Tech
23. NC State
24. FSU
25. Oregon State
I'm not putting Utah in the top 10 because the Utes have yet to even play a ranked team. The two best teams they've faced are Pitt and Air Force, games the Utes won by a combined eight points. That's not a top 10 team's resume in any context.
Am I giving LSU too much credit for only having one loss? Am I giving Oklahoma State too little credit for the same? Oregon State enters despite having three defeats because two of its losses are to top 10 teams, plus it has a win over Arizona. The loss to Washington is bad, but imagine if the Beavers played Montana State and North Texas instead of Boise State and TCU. They'd be ranked under that circumstance, so I think it's enough here. Especially since Oregon State pushed both of those top ten teams it lost to.