Tuesday Top-25

Oh, boy. Now that things have shaken out and we're approaching the last few weekends of football, I've had to change my approach to the top-25. First, I'm keeping all the undefeateds in the top-4 spots, just divided into two tiers and listed alphabetically. next is the one-loss teams listed in order of who has been more impressive lately. Beyond that are two clusters of teams with weird round-robin relationships, one cluster from the SEC and one from the Big-XII. So, the SEC has Alabama who beat Arkansas who beat SoCar who beat Alabama. Next is a 4-way knot from the Big-XII: Missouri over Texas A&M who beat Oklahoma and Nebraska. I have the SEC cluster over the Big XII because i think the teams are better and we have a head-to-head Arkansas win over Texas A&M. The Whatevs group is three teams that are hard to place: Mississippi State, whose only lost to the four SEC teams listed above, Virginia Tech, who has won 9 in a row, and Nevada, whose only loss was to Boise. Bringing up the rear is an ACC two-fer and a confusing know of PAC-10 teams with Iowa thrown in for fun. The ACC teams are NC State slightly ahead of Florida State, who they edged out head-to-head. The PAC-10 group has USC over Arizona and then Arizona over Iowa. Perhaps the most confusing thing overall is Oregon State's inclusion i this group. Two of their losses were to the #3 and #4 teams in the nation and they own head-to-head victories over both USC and Arizona. So, yes they're listed, but they are not officially ranked - just recognized.

Tier 1:
Auburn
Oregon

Tier 2:
Boise State
TCU

One-Loss:
5. Wisconsin
6. Stanford
7. LSU
8. Ohio State
9. Oklahoma State
10. Michigan State       

The SEC Cluster:
11. Alabama
12. Arkansas
13. South Carolina

The Big-XII Cluster:
14. Missouri
15. Texas A&M
16. Oklahoma
17. Nebraska

Whatevs:
18. Virginia Tech
19. Mississippi State
20. Nevada

The ACC:
21. NC State
22. Florida State

The End:
* Oregon State
23. USC
24. Arizona
25. Iowa