The Associated Press released their first regular season Top 25 poll and the Stanford Cardinal have risen from No. 7 to No. 6 thanks primarily to Oregon's ugly loss to the LSU Tigers. It helped that Stanford easily defeated the San Jose State Spartans, but they were not going to receive a whole lot of bonus points for the win. The Cardinal picked up 63 points in the AP poll and actually closed the gap with now No. 5 Florida State, trailing them by only 42 points.
Oklahoma lost four first place votes as the LSU Tigers were richly rewarded by the AP voters. They climbed from fourth to second, leap-frogging Alabama and gaining 16 first place votes in the process. Nobody is really "in the driver's seat" at this point in the process, but LSU did the most for their cause with the win over Oregon. Even if Oregon ends up proving vastly overrated this year, the early win gets LSU in prime position in the polls.
The Boise State Broncos were the second beneficiary this week following their strong road victory over the Georgia Bulldogs. The Broncos climbed from No. 5 to No. 4 and gained 110 points in the poll, leaving them less than 100 points behind Alabama at No. 3. The Broncos schedule is not as strong as some of the team's ahead of them, so they will look to take advantage of every chance they get this season to climb into a possible national title game appearance.