Kind of a dog of a week, punctuated by two big upsets: USC and Michigan St both dropped big games and crashed their seasons into a wall. Poll below and explanations after the jump. Things get real next week.
And The Valley Shook! Ballot - Week 3
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 2 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 3 | Oregon Ducks | -- |
| 4 | West Virginia Mountaineers | -- |
| 5 | Florida St. Seminoles |
 2 |
| 6 | Florida Gators | -- |
| 7 | Kansas St. Wildcats |
 -1 |
| 8 | Georgia Bulldogs | -- |
| 9 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 10 | South Carolina Gamecocks |
1 |
| 11 | Clemson Tigers |
1 |
| 12 | Stanford Cardinal | -- |
| 13 | Texas Longhorns |
4 |
| 14 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish |
9 |
| 15 | UCLA Bruins |
1 |
| 16 | Northwestern Wildcats |
9 |
| 17 | Oregon St. Beavers |
1 |
| 18 | Ohio St. Buckeyes |
1 |
| 19 | Arizona Wildcats |
5 |
| 20 | Baylor Bears | -- |
| 21 | Ohio Bobcats | -- |
| 22 | USC Trojans |
-17 |
| 23 | Louisville Cardinals | -- |
| 24 | TCU Horned Frogs | -- |
| 25 | Missouri Tigers | -- |
| Dropouts: Michigan St. Spartans, Virginia Tech Hokies, Arizona St. Sun Devils, Tennessee Volunteers, ULM Warhawks | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
1 Alabama They look good. Real good..
2 LSU When sloppy and disinterested, they win by almost 50 points.
3 Oregon Honestly, a big winner on the day. Anyone picking USC to beat them right now?
4 West Virginia Just biding time until the Big 12 season starts
5 Florida St The Wake game is traditionally a real hurdle for the Noles... not so much this year.
6 Florida No one has a better resume right now, with two big SEC wins, both on the road.
7 Kansas St KSU is following a formula of looking terrible against bad teams, as if anyone will care if they keep whacking the real competition.
8 Georgia Had the poor man's version of LSU's win.
9 Oklahoma Still not impressive, but I just don't know who to rank. It's still early.
10 South Carolina The QB controversy worked itself out naturally, eh?
11 Clemson Is anyone else disturbed by the university president dressing up as 8-Ball?
12 Stanford A good win over an over-ranked USC team but it remains to be seen whether Stanford is that good or SC is that bad.
13 Texas Finally got to watch them on the TV and they look for real. Still waiting until they play a good team, but the early signs as positive.
14 Notre Dame Damn. Damn, damn, damn. We're in for a year (or a few weeks) of "The Irish Are Back!" stories.
15 UCLA Solidified the gains from last week by crushing Houston
16 Northwestern 3-0 vs. teams from the BCS conferences. No one else can say that.
17 Oregon St This was a slow week, the big wins were last week. Move along.
18 Ohio St Outplayed, but somehow eked out a tough win over Cal. Ladies and gentlemen, your best Big Ten team?
19 Arizona Correcting last week's under-rank. They crushed Okie St, people. Crushed 'em.
20 Baylor They are killing time with a weak schedule.
21 Ohio Had a scare against Marshall, but still unbeaten.
22 USC OK, I felt e-bullied into ranking them in the top five, mainly because I didn't want to be the stereotypical LSU fan bashing SC. But it really has nothing to do with "hate" (though I do hate Lane Kiffin for unrelated to USC reasons), it has to do with a team with mediocre line play, no depth, and a season that wasn't as good as people thought it was last year. If they don't get that fluke win over Oregon, they are a lower top 25 team headed into this season. This is a correction to where I should have been ranking USC all along, and really have wanted to, particularly as the rest of the Pac-12 teams were racking up big wins. I could make a case for "unranked", and you don't see a lot of one loss teams on my ballot, but I'll let them hang around, bowing to the Wisdom of the Crowd.
23 Louisville Making it a lot harder on themselves than it had to be.
24 TCU Not a huge believer in the Frogs, and the Kansas game wasn't all that convincing, but you have to rank somebody.
25 Missouri Rebounded from a tough loss to a top ten team to then beat a ranked squad. Not many teams have played ranked teams in back to back weeks, and 1-1 is a performance good enough to make the top 25. But barely.