The AL Poll: Post Week 4

The AP Poll is released at 1pm on Sundays during the college football season and is a detriment to CFB society. The glaring issue with the poll is that it is flawed to ball watchers everywhere, the release time of updated rankings are the top piece of evidence in this claim. It is impossible for the voters to have enough time to fully digest the nearly 30 games from the weekend that must be taken into consideration. To save everyone from the horror show that is the AP Poll, I have very bravely taken it amongst myself to give you a more accurate take otherwise known as the Andrew Lotz Poll or AL Poll. I would love to hear your own thoughts in the comments below.

1) I watched either live or condensed game replays for every team that is ranked or has been removed. While I hope you comment with how wrong I am, my process is a definite step in the right direction that major polls should take into consideration.

2) I humbly can say that I am hardly wrong when it comes to these issues.

The first monumental day in the 2026 College Football season was this Saturday and if you happened to miss it, or worse: were at a wedding, I cannot help but pity you. I was at a house that had 4 screens playing games simultaneously from 2:00pm on and still didn’t have enough pixels to fit in all the action, otherwise known as a true CFB dream come true. Starting with the biggest mover of the bunch, no one had a more shocking outcome this weekend than the Florida Gators. Hats off to Jon Sumrall on the team he has assembled in Gainesville as they absolutely, for lack of a better term, took it to Ole Miss on Saturday. The most important question that needs to be asked when making a poll is “How?” How did a team win? How did a game playout? How did each team look in the game? How do they compare against their peers? When evaluating Florida this Saturday the answer to the most significant how: “How did a team win?”, was clear, they out coached Ole Miss. The Gators executed their gameplan to perfection and used their potent offense to jump on Ole Miss and never gave Trinidad Chambliss a way to hero-ball the Rebels to another win. The second how can be used when evaluating the Gators as well for their game vs Auburn as the stat watchers will tell you it was a close & high scoring affair – which is wrong. The Gators dominated Auburn in Jordan Hare and took their foot off the gas, making the score look a lot closer than the actual game was: Florida had won by the end of their first drive of the 4th quarter. The Florida staff clearly knows how they intend to win ballgames before they enter them and have a real strategy that has worked for them thus far. If someone can figure out how to stop their rushing attack they might be in trouble, but judging by the way their running backs get 8 yards before getting touched on nearly every other play, I doubt that will be very soon.

Louisville dropped out of my top 15 after their loss to Wake Forest at home this weekend as they squandered multiple chances that Wake gave them to win the game right at the end including 2 missed field goals in the final 3 minutes. Wake won this game by sticking to their identity that they have developed under Head Coach Jake Dickert: solid defense and ball control offense with explosives mixed in. This mixture proved to be Louisville’s weakness as their offense could only carry them for so long until the wheels eventually fell off. Louisville’s loss also knocked SMU out of my top 25 for two reasons: SMU is a worse version of Louisville (can only go as far as the offense takes them) and a disappointing performance against Missouri St. Texas can also be seen as a loser this weekend as they once again won barely won a game that they should have dominated. Anyone who has watched Tennessee play at all could’ve told you Texas was going to win simply because Faizon Brandon was not going to be able to make enough play against Texas’s defense, but the Longhorn offense couldn’t manage to do more than sputter as they struggled to put the Vols away until they batted down the would be game winning Hail Mary attempt in the endzone. While they will stay above Ohio St for now, the Longhorns must figure out how to get all 3 phases of the game working together before they matchup with Oklahoma in Dallas.

There aren’t any G6 schools in my poll for a very good reason: none of them have earned it. Although none have cracked the top 25, NDSU and Tulsa currently sit at the top of my G6 rankings with Boise St and Oregon St on their heels. NDSU has dominated their competition so far and (after watching the game of course) I am convinced that Tulsa would have had a very good shot at their second win this year vs a P5 school as the score in that game did not indicate how close the game was until late in the second half.

Utah is my top riser this week (outside of Florida) as they controlled the entire ball game vs Iowa State in Ames on Saturday and, if it weren’t for a doinker (FG that produces a loud doink sound) that went off the right upright in the final 2 minutes, could have won by 17. Nebraska notched themselves as a contender (for now) in the Big10 as they dominated Michigan St in East Lansing en route to a 31-13 victory in a game that was never close. UCLA, Oklahoma St, Wisconsin, and Wake all jumped into the poll from outside the Top 25 after impressive wins this Saturday.