Not a despicable effort on our part, especially given that we’re still in the process of college football’s collective roof caving in on us. Arguments, clarifications, and apologies follow.

Rank Team Delta
1 LSU —
2 Southern Cal —
3 California 3
4 Ohio State 7
5 Oregon 2
6 Boston College 4
7 Wisconsin 1
8 South Florida 13
9 Kentucky 4
10 Oklahoma 7
11 Florida 6
12 West Virginia 8
13 South Carolina 3
14 Georgia 1
15 Cincinnati 2
16 Missouri 3
17 Texas 8
18 Rutgers 6
19 Hawaii 5
20 Arizona State 3
21 Purdue 5
22 Clemson 8
23 Virginia 2
24 Kansas 2
25 Kansas State 1

Dropped Out: Alabama (#18), Penn State (#20).

Rule 138, sporadically observed: Quality losses count. Florida, Rutgers, Alabama, and Penn State, and Texas all plummet based on losing to unranked, unheralded opponents. Rutgers should have actually fallen further, given that they lost to a Maryland team seemingly incapable of completing a pass longer than six yards earlier this season; however, we’ll reserve some additional plummeting pending the result of their game against Cincy for next week.

Oregon, however, is a damn good team who lost at the very last second to the third best team in the nation by our and many, many others’ estimates. Go ahead and let a bit of head-to-head hypotheticals leak into your brain: do you really, truly think Oregon doesn’t beat Boston College at this point, or USF, or even Florida, given the massive structural problems the Gators are having right now? A noble loss to a great team doesn’t knock you too far down, say our five brain cells.

Remaining knots:

Big Ten knot: Ohio State over Wisconsin. We’ve let logic rule here and just admitted to us and the heavens that the Buckeyes have looked impervious while Wisconsin has been one of the shakiest undefeated teams in the nation. It’s safe enough at this point to let Purdue sneak in there at the bottom, too, since we’re looking at a giants vs. midgets year for the Big Ten, with the tallest midget at the moment wearing a Boilermaker shirt. We know they’ll disappoint…but a bit of sunshine on the face is nice, even if you know you’re just going to fall right back into the well just as it touches your skin.

SEC knots: Florida could fall further pending a decent performance versus LSU. Kentucky and South Carolina will shake out Thursday, allowing us and other voters to properly pop one into the top ten with confidence while confidently shuffling the other into tweener teendom somewhere around 15. Georgia remains average in almost every category statistically save for scoring defense and punting, which may be enough for them in an unbalanced SEC East.

The eyes of Kansas are upon you. Two ranked teams from Kansas is admittedly too many. Again, real life could shake this out, or the two could somehow play badly enough against each other in their rivalry game to make us de-rank both for shame. As long as Ron Prince dances we can’t get too worked up about the whole thing, though if Mangino attempts a counter-move on his sideline, we’re dialing 9-1 and waiting for the inevitable.

ACC knot: Virginia–really? An ironic vote, yes–but blame Groh-mentum for our passion for Virginia Cavalier football! It’s irresistable! They are undefeated in the ACC, and have just a solid a chance at the title as anyone else due to the fact that the entire conference seems to politely regard an undefeated season in conference as being extremely rude to their conference mates.

Bit bullish on Hawaii, eh? On the mainland we don’t say Mahalo! We say fuck you, as in “fuck you, after what you saw Saturday, why the fuck couldn’t Hawaii get a BCS spot?”