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.

Perhaps we’re entering into a new era in the world of college football. When was the last time Rutgers and Wake Forest were both ranked in the AP Poll? We had a huge matchup this past weekend in Auburn when the #2 Florida Gators took on the Auburn Tigers. As I predicted, the Tigers jumped back into the national title picture by beating the visiting Gators. The win moved Auburn up to #8 in the AP Poll, but more importantly to #4 in the BCS Standings ahead of undefeated West Virginia. So much for the loss to Arkansas taking Auburn out of the title hunt!

We also had a couple of unexpected upsets. Indiana shocked Iowa in Bloomington and Vanderbilt shocked Georgia in Athens. Other less shocking upsets involving ranked teams were #19 Missouri falling to unranked Texas A&M and #22 Virginia Tech falling to unranked Boston College. The victorious teams in these latter cases were all rewarded with their own spots on the ranking list this week.

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.

Michigan and USC both had tough games that may have been closer than many predicted. Michigan held off Penn State in State College 17-10 and USC held off Arizona State 28-21 at home in L.A. Obviously, the pollsters were more impressed with Michigan’s ability to stave off the Nittany Lions than they were with USC’s close win over the Sun Devils as the Wolverines catapulted over the Trojans to take the #2 spot. Obviously, this is only temporarily important as both teams have big games on the horizon.

I had it right that Auburn, Tennessee and Florida would hold spots 7, 8, and 9 but I had the order wrong. Given that Florida beat Tennessee head to head, I would have put the Gators ahead of the Vols but obviously my opinion doesn’t count for much. I was wrong on picking Iowa and Georgia to win and both teams fell completely out of the poll. Aside from those few games, I was pretty close on all my picks again. Maybe I’m getting pretty good at this.

It’s tough to say what the game of the week is this week. We’ve got two pretty big inter-divisional matchups. The leaders of the two Big XII divisions face off in Lincoln and the leaders of the two ACC divisions match up in Clemson. Because Texas and Nebraska are in separate divisions, this may not be the last time we see the two teams square off. The same can be said for Georgia Tech and Clemson. I’m going to take the higher ranked teams in both contests. Texas and Clemson both win as Texas shows the gap between Nebraska and the upper echelon of college football is still wider than Husker fans would like to admit. The Yellow Jackets will play the Tigers very tough but Clemson will pull it out in the fourth quarter and win a close one.