College Football Rankings 2020: Projected AP Top 25 for Week 6

With voters showing how they intend to rank Big Ten and Pac-12 teams, we have a better idea of the shape of the college football rankings.

The Top 25 projections, let’s face it, were an absolute mess in Week 5. That was bound to happen with the voters free to include (or not include) teams from the Big Ten, Pac-12, MAC, and Mountain West. Voters in the AP Top 25 poll had tough choices to make, and none entirely agreed on which teams to include and exclude from their ballots.

Ultimately teams universally fell a few spots behind their original preseason position in the rankings. Ohio State went from a No. 2 team in the preseason to the No. 6 team in the country upon their return to the AP Top 25. With more first-place votes than Alabama or any other team besides Clemson, their ranking outside the top five was more a result of being left off 11 ballots than any indictment of their potential.

Still, it felt weird to see where some teams landed. Penn State was three spots off their preseason ranking. Oregon dropped five spots, while Wisconsin and Michigan each tumbled seven positions. Teams like USC, Minnesota, Utah, and Iowa which were included in the preseason rankings failed to crack back into the list after Week 5.

Could any of those teams make it back into the list this time after a shakeup in Week 5 that included another top-10 loss in the Big 12 and several other upsets that have as many as five teams falling out of the AP Top 25 this week? Let’s dive in and parse out how the dust might settle on Sunday when the AP Top 25 is released ahead of Week 6 play.