FANPULSE: College Football Top 25 Week One

A few weeks ago, you helped pick the FanPulse preseason top 25 — and if you didn’t, why didn’t you? You can correct that deficiency here going forward, and we won’t call HR on you.

Now we’ve had a week’s worth of games (plus two) to consider what we’ve done, and it appears that for the most part we’re fairly content with our decisions. But before we get to the BotC-specific results, let’s get the SB Nation-wide ranking out of the way.

The top five — Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio State — remain unchanged from last week. The first big move is LSU jumping from 10 to 6 on the strength of pounding the snot out of Georgia Southern, which considering how things went for the bottom end of the SEC last weekend is probably valid. Just a couple of places below the Tigers are... umm, the Tigers. Auburn made the biggest jump of the week, vaulting from 18 to 8 after dismissing Oregon on Saturday; Oregon, likewise, took the biggest hit of the week as they fell from 12 to 17. Notre Dame fell three spots as a result of those two jumps, because the voters kept Texas at 9 rather than pushing them down as well. Michigan remains at 7 for now.

Florida Gators, despite their Week 0 win over Miami, also dropped three places and out of the top 10. (Miami was ranked #22, and they’re no longer with us.) Texas A&M slips a spot to 12 courtesy of Auburn, while Washington holds steady at 13. Utah, despite laying wood on BYU, swaps places with Penn State; you can probably blame general Pac-12 suspicion for that at this point. Central Florida stays at 16, and Wisconsin gets pushed to 18 due to Auburn’s rise. Michigan State jump from 23 to 19 for absolutely no reason we can discern because 28-7 over Tulsa isn’t impressive; Iowa remains at 20.

Not a single team in the last five was not there last week. The most important of those to us, Iowa State, is down three spots to 23 because of a less-than-stellar win over Northern Iowa. Three of the other four are all new to this week’s poll: Syracuse comes in at 21, which is a mystery because come on, Liberty? Washington State checks in at 22, Stanford is at 24 after knocking out last week’s 21, Northwestern, and for some reason Nebraska are hanging in there at 25.

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So what did we think? Our top seven matched the national poll, with Notre Dame and Texas remaining ahead of tenth-ranked Auburn. Our 11-16 also matched, but Wisconsin and Michigan State are both one spot higher as we punished Oregon even more severely with a fall to 19th. We also matched 20-22, but — and to me, this is the most interesting result of this week’s poll in comparison to the nationwide ranking — we put Stanford at 23rd and dropped Iowa State all the way to 25th.

But at least we didn’t rank Nebraska, which means we voted one team into the top 25 that our peers did not: the Memphis Tigers, your 24th-ranked team of week one.

Joining us in the “Nebraska out, Memphis in” club: our friends at Roll Bama Roll, A Sea of Blue, and Smoking Musket.

Boise State was the biggest beneficiary of Nebraska’s struggle Saturday. Alligator Army, taking a shot at their in-state rival Florida State, gave that spot to the Broncos, as did the folks at Daily Gopher, One Foot Down (Notre Dame), Cardiac Hill (Pitt), Frogs O’ War, Bucky’s 5th Quarter, and Black Heart Gold Pants, who surprisingly didn’t take the opportunity to slam the Cyclones.

Our Daily Bears replaced Nebraska with, well, Baylor; Backing the Pack likewise gave themselves a spot for North Carolina State. From the Rumble Seat (Georgia Tech) went with Virginia, while Land Grant Holy Land surprisingly recognized the existence of their little brothers in Cincinnati.

Rocky Top Talk put Memphis in, but booted Iowa State instead of Nebraska. Dawg Sports really went in, ranking both Memphis and Boise while kicking Stanford to the curb, while the folks at Underdog Dynasty did the same, only with Iowa State missing the cut.

Finally, the extra question on this week’s poll. You were asked if you were confident in the state of the program after Week One. Every single one of you said “Yes”. That put you in the same boat as fans of Arizona State, Auburn, Baylor, California, Clemson, Colorado, Duke, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, North Carolina State, Oklahoma, Stanford, Syracuse, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Virginia, Wake Forest, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

Yes, someone at Roll Bama Roll said “no”. Gumps, man. Sheesh.

As for the rest of the Big 12, Texas is at 97.7%, Oklahoma State’s at 93.8%, Iowa State at 96%, and TCU at 89.7%. The start of the Les Miles era got good reviews from Kansas fans, checking in at 85.7%.

Some notable BAD results from that question, with the percentages being the “yes” percent: Arizona 7.7%, Arkansas 64.7%, Florida State 42.7%, Michigan State 54.3%, Missouri 27.3%, Ole Miss 27.6%, Pitt 34.5%, Rutgers 45%, Tennessee 32.3%, UCLA 27.6%, USC 22.2%, and Virginia Tech 32%.

But our big winner? The fans at Garnet and Black Attack, to a person, issued a complete vote of no confidence in the South Carolina program. A big fat 0%. Woof.

So, tell us what you think — about your own poll, and about the thoughts of others.