Latest Hot updates Form The Ballot …

Hot updates Form The Ballot .

* This was the toughest week of the year, by far.

On my initial sketch of the ballot, I had hole in slots 6-10 and 23-25 — no teams had earned those positions. Of course, you can’t submit an incomplete ballot, so this became a multi-hour task.

* The reason this week was so difficult: nine of the 25 teams on last week’s ballot lost.

Losing doesn’t have to cause havoc — I have no problem keeping a losing team in the same spot if it’s a quality loss (ie: on the road against a ranked team) — but this time it did. Oh, did it.

For instance, Florida losing at home to Mississippi State … Nebraska losing at home to Texas … Oregon State losing at Washington (where ASU won last week) … Nevada losing at Hawaii … those are not quality losses. Those are loses that require teams to be dropped way down the ballot, or off it altogether.

And no, there were absolutely not nine teams that improved their resumes enough to warrant replacing the losers.

* The big winners on the field and on the ballot were Michigan State and Wisconsin.

The Badgers’ victory over Ohio State (which was No. 7 on my ballot last week) warranted a move up the ballot. At the same time, Michigan State deserves to be ahead of Wisconsin based on its head-to-head win and better overall resume. So I moved MSU up, as well.

Both teams jumped a good 12-15 spots, which isn’t unusual. (As I’ve explained before, the AP encourages big moves up and down to offset preseason bias.)

But some of that Big Ten bounce was due to the nine teams losing. My initial sketch did not have the Spartans in the 8 hole and the Badgers in the 10 hole.

* Another winner was Stanford, which moved up five spots, to No. 7, even though it didn’t play.

The Cardinal received a slight resume upgrade with USC’s showing vs. Cal, but in a typical week I wouldn’t have moved Stanford that high. It’s just that the teams ranked 7, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 15 on last week’s allot all lost — and again, most of those losses were not quality losses.

* Team updates coming later, after AP poll is released …

1. Oklahoma

2. Auburn

3. Boise State

4. Oregon

5. LSU

6. Alabama

7. Stanford

8. Michigan State

9. Texas Christian

10. Wisconsin

11. Arizona

12. South Carolina

13. Arkansas

14. Iowa

15. Florida State

16. Ohio State

17. Texas

18. Virginia Tech

19. USC

20. Mississippi State

21. Utah

22. Nebraska

23. Missouri

24. West Virginia

25. Oklahoma State