College Football Rankings 2020: Projected AP Top 25 for Week 5

The Big Ten and Pac-12 are once again eligible to receive votes in college football’s AP Top 25. How will that impact the hierarchy for Week 5?

For the first time in 2020, we got a look at SEC teams as the league hit the field for its all-conference schedule. With eight teams entering Week 4 in the AP Top 25 and two more among the others receiving votes, this weekend offered a chance to separate the contenders from the pretenders and thin out the SEC ranks in the poll.

It came right on time, too, as we learned that every team that intends to play football this fall is now eligible for inclusion in the AP Top 25 this week.

That, of course, means that Big Ten teams like Ohio State and Wisconsin can return to the list they left after the preseason. The same is true of Pac-12 contenders like Oregon and USC. Pollsters are even free to vote for Mountain West favorite Boise State.

That makes the job of projecting where teams will land in this week’s AP Top 25 that much more difficult. But we are already dealing with fluctuations based on postponements and cancellations under COVID-19 protocols, so if anything this reintroduction of the remaining FBS conferences only reinforces the ephemeral, mythical nature of the entire enterprise.

Look no further than the case of Marshall, which is projected to fall out of the rankings this weekend despite two more wins on their schedule than teams like the Buckeyes or Ducks. Teams that took a bye on the final weekend of September could experience a drop in ranking through no fault of their own.

That was always going to be a potential cost of playing a season during a pandemic. But the rankings will be released on Sunday, so let’s dive in and take a gander at where teams might land in the Week 5 edition of the AP Top 25 in the latest projections from Saturday Blitz.