This looks cluttered and chaotic this week, so I'll listen to any input you can offer before Wednesday morning.
1 Auburn
2 Oregon
3 TCU
4 Stanford
5 Wisconsin
Stanford and Wisconsin move up because of the losses by LSU and Boise State and their own wins. Otherwise, status quo for another week.
6 Arkansas
7 Ohio State
8 Michigan State
9 LSU
10 Alabama
This part of the ballot is almost completely different. Arkansas zooms up seven places after defeating LSU, which falls from No. 5 to No. 9. Ohio State also moves up three and Michigan State advances four, largely because of losses ahead of the Spartans. Alabama only drops by one because they only lost by one point to the No. 1 team in the nation. You can argue that they shouldn't have dropped at all, but Arkansas passed them.
11 Nebraska
12 Oklahoma
13 Missouri
14 Boise State
15 Oklahoma State
Again, a lot of moving around. Nebraska stays put, Oklahoma moves up by five. Missouri moves up slightly and Oklahoma State drops eight. And there's Boise at No. 14 in the poll -- because the loss to Nevada takes away any extra credit the Broncos get for being undefeated and puts a significant dent in their resume.
16 Texas A&M
17 South Carolina
18 Nevada
19 Virginia Tech
20 Florida State
I really would have liked to move Nevada up some more, but the chaos on the ballot makes everything a little bit fluid this week. At least the Wolf Pack are closer to Boise here than they were in some other major polls. It's impossible to keep the "chain of wins" there, because Nevada defeated Boise but Boise defeated Hawaii and Hawaii defeated Nevada.
21 Utah
22 Mississippi State
23 West Virginia
24 Arizona
25 Hawaii
I'm really not sure the ballot should go to 25, but it does. So here's what left after the latest this week: a collection of teams with a few impressive wins and not-so-terrible losses, with a lot of questionable guesswork taking place of the data that builds the top of the ballot. I do like Hawaii better than Northern Illinois -- every else's default choice -- if for no other reason than the Nevada wins looks better now than anything Northern Illinois has on its schedule.
The chart:
Click to read.