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.

“Upset Saturday”? I haven’t seen any media source dub this past weekend as that, but probably more upsets happened than in any other weekend. First of all, Oregon State taking down goliath USC has to be the upset of the year. I had previously given Arkansas over Auburn that title but this one’s bigger because of how Arkansas has succeeded since their upset win. USC dropped to #9 but they’re still the highest ranked Pac-10 team.

The Trojans weren’t the only top 10 team to go down on the road. Everything was going right for Tommy Bowden and his Clemson Tigers. Most people were crowning them as the best team in the ACC and were one BC loss away from going to the ACC Championship Game in Jacksonville. That all came to a grinding halt on Thursday night in Blacksburg as the Hokies played the role of spoiler very well. The Tigers’ chances of making a BCS bowl are now slim to none.

I probably wasn’t alone in picking those two games wrong, but 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.

The other two picks I got wrong both came from the Big XII. Nebraska’s loss @ Oklahoma State was a surprise and the Huskers now find themselves unranked once again. The only game involving two ranked teams was Oklahoma @ Missouri. I went with the home team here but maybe Oklahoma is on a mission now that they’ve had a few major setbacks this year.

Though I correctly picked Tennessee and Florida to win, I didn’t account for either game to be as close once the final gun sounded. Obviously, the voters were more impressed with the Gators’ win in Jacksonville over a Georgia team experiencing a down year than the Vols’ win over the Gamecocks in Columbia. I’m a little surprised by this, but the Gators do deserve a higher ranking due to their head-to-head win over the Vols.

I’m sure Charlie Weis spit out his Corn Flakes when he opened the Sunday morning paper and found out that the Cal Golden Bears – who were on a bye week – jumped his Notre Dame squad in the polls. Notre Dame beat Navy by 24 points. Weis was vocal last week in claiming that the voters had it out for his team and were unjustifiably underrating them. This action by the AP voters may give a little legitimacy to that claim.

Wisconsin was punished for their close game against lowly Illinois and probably not enough in my opinion. Boston College jumped the Badgers, but I would have put Georgia Tech and Texas A&M ahead of them as well. Washington State was rewarded for a big road win against UCLA and this was more impressive than Tulsa’s win over UTEP so this brought the Cougars into the top 25 rather than the Golden Hurricane as I had predicted.

So what’s going to happen this weekend? There are plenty of big games this week and maybe one of the “games of the year” is West Virginia @ Louisville Thursday night. The winner of this game is going to have a very interesting ride from here on out with talk of the National Championship Game and whether they deserve the bid more than a one-loss SEC team or Texas or USC. I’m going with WVU as my pick because Louisville is just too banged up to hang with the ‘Eers even though it’s at home for them.

You want upsets? I’ve got upsets. LSU will go into Knoxville and take down the Vols. Arkansas will go into Columbia and come out losers against the “other” USC. BC will go down to Winston-Salem and come home with their hopes of Jacksonville dashed. Oklahoma will arrive in College Station with two losses and leave with three. Look out for Maryland to beat Clemson in a let down game, but officially I still pick Clemson to win in a close one.

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