With just three teams ranked inside last week’s Top 25 losing in Week 8, it was expected there’d be precious little movement in the newly-released Associated Press poll.
As expected, the, uh, expected has indeed taken place, even as there was at least one mild surprise.
As it has since the second poll of the season, Alabama held the top spot according to the AP. For the first time since the Sept. 23 release, however, the Tide wasn’t a unanimous choice as Florida grabbed one of the 60 first-place votes away from the defending BcS champions.
‘Bama did set a school record by sitting atop the AP poll for the eight straight week, so they have that going for them, which is nice.
Other than that minor first-place tweak? There wasn’t much change at the top. The top six spots remained the same as they were a week ago, with Oregon, Florida, Kansas State, Notre Dame and LSU, in that order, following Alabama. The first change comes at No. 7, with Ohio State, which escaped with an overtime home win over Purdue, dropping two spots to No. 9 and replaced by Oregon State. The Beavers moved up one spot, as did USC (No. 10).
Oklahoma moved up two spots to No. 8 to round out this week’s Top 10.
On the strength of its loss to Florida, South Carolina was the only team to drop out of the Top 10, tumbling from No. 9 to No. 17. West Virginia is barely clinging to a ranking, free-falling all the way from No. 17 to No. 25.
Louisiana Tech was the only new team in this week’s Top 25, coming in at No. 24. The Bulldogs replaced Cincinnati (then-No. 21).
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