AP College Football Poll: Week 4 Poll Drops Many Pretenders from Rankings

With the Week 4 AP Top 25 Poll just released a few hours ago, the one thing I immediately noticed is how good of a job they did cutting the fat from the rankings and keeping some of the other pretenders on the bubble out.

Michigan State, Ohio State, Auburn, Arizona State and Mississippi State all made their exit from the Top 25, while Clemson, Southern Cal, Michigan, Illinois and Georgia Tech all found their way into the poll.

I’m happy that all of these undefeated teams got in and they took out a bunch of one and two loss teams that did not prove themselves. It’s best to have to earn a spot in the Top 25 with stellar play and preferably be undefeated.

The only qualm I have this week is TCU at No. 20. They played a game against Louisiana-Monroe that was closer than the score indicated.

They aren’t a legitimate team this year and are completely overrated in my opinion.

I also see that voters surprisingly showed little respect for Notre Dame’s win over Michigan State.

I figured that they would receive a ton of votes for beating the unproven MSU team but they only garnered eight. That is fair for a team that started the season way too overrated at No. 16 and lost two straight.

The most interesting team in the Top 25 has to be USC.

They are ineligible for postseason play but could find themselves undefeated this season if they upset Stanford and Oregon.

How would the NCAA react if a team like the Trojans managed to go undefeated but could not play in the Pac-12 Championship or Bowl game?

It will be interesting to see as these Top 25 polls continue to get more and more intriguing and we inch closer to the first BCS polls of the 2011 season.

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