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My AP top-25 football ballot: LSU is No. 1; Texas A&M, Georgia and USC rise

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Here's the first in-season ballot, and it requires an explanation beyond the placement of specific teams, particularly for new readers of this space. If you'll recall, my preseason ballot -- submitted before injuries, suspensions and attrition hit the likes of Ohio State, Notre Dame and Northwestern -- was a projection of where I think the teams will finish. Once the season begins, I use the results as the basis for slotting teams in an attempt to rid the ballot of preseason hype/guesswork/misconceptions as quickly and thoroughly as possible. That's not as easy as it sounds, however, because many of the teams we presume to be among the best don't play top-tier opposition until a month into the season. In these early weeks, I'm attempting not only to evaluate the winner but also the loser. It's not only about Florida State, Texas A&M and Alabama; it's also about Oklahoma State, South Carolina and West Virginia. Maybe the Mountaineers are much better than they were last year ... and much better than everyone expected them to be this year ... and Alabama's win turns out to be a first-class victory. Or maybe WVU is exactly what we thought and the Crimson Tide's win wasn't impressive, after all. At this point, we simply don't know.   I moved both West Virginia and Oklahoma State onto my ballot because both proved they could play with what we think are to-tier teams (Alabama and Florida State, respectively). To my way of thinking, losing to a quality opponent is better than trouncing a cupcake, because at least we know the loser belongs in the upper echelon. The list of teams that have soared in the early-season rankings after several blowout wins over cupcakes, only to collapse when the schedule stiffened, would stretch from here to Manhattan, Kan. The ballot below is really a best-guess meshing of two types of teams: Those that have substantive results after Week 1 -- there aren't many -- and those that were on my preseason ballot and beat up on cupcakes. A few weeks from now, the ballot will based entirely on results. In my estimation, LSU's victory over Wisconsin stands as the best result of the weekend -- the Badgers (No. 5 on my preseason ballot) are several notches better than South Carolina (No. 18). If upcoming results dictate, I'll downgrade that evaluation of LSU's win. Here we go ...
Also considered (no particular order): Duke, Virginia Tech, Louisville, Missouri, Cal, North Carolina, Central Michigan, Mississippi State, Iowa, Michigan, TCU and Nebraska.
1. LSU
2. Texas A&M
3, Florida State
4. Georgia
5. USC
6. Alabama
7. Oklahoma
8. Oregon
9. Michigan State
10. Wisconsin
11. Oklahoma State
12. UCLA
13. Baylor
14. Stanford
15. Auburn
16. Mississippi
17. Ohio State
18. Notre Dame
19. West Virginia
20. Marshall
21. Tennessee
22. BYU
23. Texas
24. Kansas State
25. Arizona State
xxxxxxxx * Follow me on Twitter: @WilnerHotline * My e-book, "Andrew Luck: Inside the Making of a No. 1 Pick," is available for $2.99 on Amazon for Kindles and for other devices (PCs, iPads and iPhones) with the free Kindle app. * Download the Bay Area News Group's new iPad app for more college sports and other news, or check out college sports coverage on MercuryNews.com.

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