What will the AP Poll look like next week? I’ve got the answer for you. Each week we’ll be predicting what each ranked team will do in the upcoming games and how that will impact their rankings. Then, we’ll compare these predictions against what actually happened as the season progresses.

This past weekend was relatively quiet as was the week prior to that. So quiet that yours truly easily predicted the top ten in the AP Poll in the exact order as they actually appear today. This wasn’t so hard to do since two of the top ten teams had a bye and some of the games involving the other eight included the likes of Sam Houston State, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss. Upsets in any of those games would have probably shaken the Earth off of its axis.

The game of the week was top ranked Ohio State going to Iowa City to take on the Hawkeyes. The Buckeyes left no doubt that they are the team to beat this year. The Hawkeyes seemed to hang around at points in the game, but I don’t think Ohio State ever doubted that they were going to win. Perhaps some had picked the upset but I wasn’t in that camp for this one.

Let’s see how the rest of my picks turned out. Below is a table showing how I had predicted the poll to look last week lined up against how it looks in reality today. I’ve also added this week’s opponent for each team to the table.

Even though the weekend was quiet for movement in the AP top ten, it did produce some good upsets and nearly a huge one. The way the weekend started out, you’d think we’d have a dozen upsets and the media would be naming it “Upset Saturday”. Auburn survived in Columbia to stay at #2 and undefeated TCU had their nation’s longest winning streak snapped at home by BYU. And we hadn’t even gotten to Saturday yet!

Despite the exciting start to the weekend on Thursday night, the rest of the games didn’t produce much in the way of exciting upsets. The highest ranked team that I picked wrong was Virginia Tech who lost at home to Georgia Tech. The Hokies did not look good on the ground and really got whipped by the Jackets. Calvin Johnson certainly looks like a Heisman finalist at this point in the season. Besides that and TCU losing, there weren’t any big disappointments on my picks.

So what’s going to happen this weekend? This coming weekend is definitely an SEC weekend and shows just how deep this conference is. What other conference can match up the #5 and #9 teams and follow that up with a #10 vs. #13 game? The LSU @ Florida and Tennessee @ Georgia games are huge and they don’t even involve the highest ranked team from the conference: Auburn.

The big games of the weekend don’t stop there. The Red River Rivalry continues as Texas and Oklahoma square off and Oregon @ Cal is a pretty good game, too. My picks? Florida wins at home over LSU. I don’t trust JaMarcus Russell to win in the Swamp. Tennessee will kill Georgia. The Bulldogs will keep this close through the first half with solid defensive play, but Tennessee will pull ahead in the second half and probably score on defense. Georgia’s offense does not look good through five games this year. I don’t see them scoring much more than 10 on Tennessee.

I promised I wouldn’t punish the Cal Golden Bears any more so I’ll pick them to win at home over Oregon. The Bears have looked solid the last few weeks and I’m kind of rooting for Oregon to go down because of the instant replay fiasco against Oklahoma few weeks ago.

Speaking of Oklahoma, they lose for the second year in a row to Texas. Now that the monkey is off of Mack Brown’s back, the Longhorns will dominate the Sooners. It won’t be as ugly as last year’s 45-12 whipping, but the final score will still be lopsided enough to reinforce to people who the real power of the Big XII South is.

Upset of the week? N.C. State always plays Florida State tough. They were the first conference team to win in Tallahassee since the Seminoles joined the ACC and the first to beat them twice. Chuck Amato has been on the hot seat for a couple of seasons now and it always seems like a win over his old boss cools that seat long enough to ride out the season. The game is in Raleigh where the Wolfpack is fresh off an upset win over Boston College. N.C State defeats FSU on a Thursday night. Missouri’s undefeated season ends against Texas Tech as well.

Some possible upsets include Wake over Clemson and Louisiana Tech over Boise State, but I think Clemson has too much to lose to fall asleep against the Demon Deacons. When there’s so much talk of a “Mid-Major” team going to a BCS Bowl so early in the season, the wheels usually fall off. So while I’d love to pick for the Broncos from Boise State to go down, I just can’t do it against a team that lost by 51 points the week before. So, I’m still going with Clemson and Boise State in those two games but I’ll be keeping an eye on them.

Here’s what the entire poll will look like a week from today: