While fans across the country were on edge watching upset after upset unfold Saturday, Houston Chronicle sports columnist Kirk Bohls and other members of The Associated Press college football poll voting panel were thinking ahead to how they would sort out and arrange the teams they would put on their ballots Sunday.
“In my 46 years of voting in the poll, this was probably the most difficult by far,” Bohls, the longest-tenured voter, wrote in an email. “It was so hard to determine how much to ‘penalize’ the Top 25 teams that lost, especially to unranked teams, but also tough to figure out how much to ‘reward’ those teams who pulled off the upset.”
In the aftermath of six Top 25 teams losing to unranked teams over the weekend, Texas was the overwhelming choice to return to No. 1 after a week’s absence.
The biggest questions for voters: how far to drop Alabama, last week’s top-ranked team, for losing to three-touchdown-underdog Vanderbilt, and should the Crimson Tide still be ahead of a Georgia team they beat a week earlier?
Alabama landed at No. 7, the biggest demotion in 14 years for a team voted off the top perch, and Georgia remained No. 5.