BRING ON THE CATS TOP 25 POLL: Week 4

I present to you Week 4 of the Bring On The Cats Top 25 Poll, in which the voters have regressed to being unable to arrive at a consensus on who the No. 1 team in the country is:

Bring On The Cats Top 25 Poll — Week 4

Rank	AP	Team	Record	Points	Delta
1	3	Alabama Crimson Tide (3)	4-0 (1-0)	230	3
2	2	Oregon Ducks (2)	4-0 (1-0)	227	1
3	1	Florida State Seminoles (2)	3-0 (1-0)	221	1
4	6	Texas A&M Aggies (1)	4-0 (1-0)	220	1
5	4	Oklahoma Sooners (2)	4-0 (1-0)	218	—
6	5	Auburn Tigers	3-0 (1-0)	208	—
7	7	Baylor Bears	3-0	191	—
8	8	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	3-0	159	1
9	10	Ole Miss Rebels	3-0 (1-0)	155	1
10	11	UCLA Bruins	3-0	137	3
11	15	Arizona State Sun Devils	3-0 (1-0)	122	1
11	14	Mississippi St. Bulldogs	4-0 (1-0)	122	19
13	20	BYU Cougars	4-0	103	6
14	9	Michigan State Spartans	2-1	100	—
15	13	South Carolina Gamecocks	3-1 (2-1)	96	2
16	12	Georgia Bulldogs	2-1 (0-1)	78	1
17	17	LSU Tigers	3-1 (0-1)	72	9
18	16	Stanford Cardinal	2-1 (0-1)	65	—
19	24	Oklahoma State Cowboys	2-1	63	1
20	19	Wisconsin Badgers	2-1	56	1
21	21	Nebraska Cornhuskers	4-0	52	2
22	25	Kansas State Wildcats	2-1 (1-0)	40	11
23	26	Duke Blue Devils	4-0	39	4
24	29	TCU Horned Frogs	2-0	34	6
25	23	East Carolina Pirates	3-1	31	NR
Dropouts: Missouri Tigers, USC Trojans, North Dakota State Bison, Clemson Tigers, Ohio State Buckeyes
Others Receiving Votes: USC 30, North Dakota State 27, Georgia Tech 24, Ohio State 21, Utah 21, Arizona 20, Penn State 16, Louisville 13, Washington 13, Marshall 8, Clemson 6, Oregon State 6, N.C. State 5, Memphis 1.

As always, your slate of voters is myself, Curtis Kitchen, EMAW 4 Ever, Jon Morse, JT VanGilder, Luke Thompson, nugget1224, PurpleBrunette, wildcat00 and KSUEMAW!

After two straight weeks of nine out of 10 of us agreeing that Oregon was the top team in the nation, chaos again reigns supreme in the wake of the Ducks' uninspiring 38-31 win at Washington State.

Five teams received first-place votes this week, with the team that barely received a plurality, Alabama, pulling into first just ahead of Oregon and Florida State. The gap between the top five teams is a measly 12 points.

Things remained fairly static down through No. 11, although I'm not quite sure how UCLA jumped three spots on a bye week, unless some voters finally stopped punishing the Bruins for winning ugly.

The week's big mover was Mississippi State, beneficiaries of but a single vote from Luke Thompson last week and vaulting 19 spots to a tie for No. 11 on the heels of an upset win in Death Valley.

Correspondingly, LSU's nine-point drop was the second-largest of the week, trailing only our beloved Wildcats' 11-point slide. You would think, with all the hype, that losing at home to SEC teams wouldn't hurt that bad...

At the bottom end, BOTC elected for a clean sweep, tossing out four teams in favor of Duke and TCU, which really haven't proven anything, and East Carolina, which certainly has.

And Mizzou probably set some kind of record for largest drop from top 16 to not receiving a single vote. Even Luke couldn't bring himself to vote for that hot mess, not with an ugly beatdown likely looming in Columbia, S.C.

The biggest divergences from the AP poll were our rankings of Arizona State, BYU and Michigan State, as well as Big 12 bias rankings of Oklahoma State and TCU.

Fun fact: Three teams received exactly the same amount of points this week as they did last week. That's pretty rare.

Other thoughts:

• Mississippi State's entry did not come without disagreement. The Bulldogs debuted anywhere from third to 25th on voters' ballots. Among teams ranked on all ballots, BYU had the second-highest variance, ranging from 10th to 24th.
  
• Oklahoma State continues to have the most variance overall, having been left off four ballots entirely, but checking into the top 10 in two others. Michigan State came in second, still not appearing on my ballot, yet residing in the top 10 of four others.
• Other than Michigan State, the highest-ranked team not to appear on every ballot is UCLA, which still is getting no love from Luke, followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which are bedecked equally with a blemishing loss.
• Some surprising and perhaps questionable ballot entries that tend to happen at this time of year, when undefeated teams who actually haven't beaten anybody are prized above one-loss teams with "good" losses, included Louisville at 13th (Luke, what are you seeing that the rest of us aren't?), Marshall at 22nd (JT, let me know when the Thundering Herd actually play someone), Oregon State at 20th (primed for its annual fall-on-its-face early loss) and Memphis at 25th (come Saturday, Jon either will be a genius when the Tigers roll the Rebels, or the driver of a very small, wrecked bandwagon).
  
• Teams that received votes last week, but not this week: Boston College, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Northern Illinois, Pittsburgh and Syracuse.