Mike Hlas’ AP Top 25 football ballot for Sept. 2, 2025: The first in a series of grave mistakes

OK, I don’t think I’ll make a big production number out of this every week. Or I might. It depends how riled up people get.

Controversy, as you all know, creates cash.

Anyhow, I’m the Iowa representative on Associated Press’ college football poll in 2025. This happened last week. AP realized last year’s Iowa rep, John Steppe, was no longer in Iowa. John took a job in his Wisconsin home state this summer, and so no one from Iowa voted in AP’s preseason poll. The shock waves from that rumbled across America, as one surely would have expected.

I wanted to say Steppe had been grabbed by ICE in Iowa City and deported to Wisconsin, but my counsel has advised me that the political overtones from such a claim might be harmful. Plus, it didn’t happen. I think.

So AP contacted me, asking if I’d do it. I hesitated. For one thing, it requires a certain amount of paying attention. For another, the ballots get people agitated. Especially my ballots, as the lunatics — I mean, fans — who took my votes on last winter’s AP men’s basketball Top 25 extremely seriously.

Weirdos.

But here I am, asking for nothing but trouble by participating in a poll that has zero bearing on the College Football Playoff. The champion is decided on the field, That’s what people remember, and all the polls before it are forgotten as quickly as New Year’s resolutions. Like many things in life, though, I’ll do it despite seeing no value in it.

The knotty problem of Week 1 was how to compare 0-1 teams that played someone (Texas, Notre Dame, Clemson, Alabama) to 1-0 teams that played tomato cans.

I gave the first three of those four losers credit. Alabama, which fell behind 24-7 and lost 31-17, to the fourth-best of the four teams that beat the aforementioned 0-1 quartet, gets no love from yours truly. Or Crimson Tide fans, for that matter.

On with the show:

1. Ohio State. Duh. Defending national-champ beats preseason No. 1 Texas. An easy No. 1 pick for moi. Then things got harder.

2. LSU. Not only won at Clemson, but outgained its fellow Tigers by 93 yards.

3. Penn State

4. Miami. That win over Notre Dame was the most-entertaining game that mattered of the weekend.

5. Oregon

6. Georgia

7. Notre Dame. Losing at Miami on a field goal with 1:04 left beats losing at home to Northern Illinois, which the Irish did in Week 2 last season before not falling again until the national-championship game.

8. Texas

9. Florida State

10. Arizona State

11. Clemson

12. Iowa State. Beating then-No. 17 Kansas State at a neutral site was great, of course. A 55-7 demolition of preseason-FCS No. 4 South Dakota surprised me. It takes me a week or so to recover from an overseas flight home. The Cyclones played like they had been on a 45-minute flight, scoring on every possession except when they ran out the clock on their last one.

13. Illinois

14. South Carolina

15. Florida

16. Ole Miss

17. Michigan. This is probably too high. Or too low. Or maybe it’s just right.

18. SMU

19. Oklahoma

20. Tennessee

21. Indiana

22. Auburn. It won at Baylor. This was the first time Auburn opened a season with a true road game since 2002 and just the fourth time in the last 65 years. Doing something so wildly daring deserves credit. I can’t wait for the Tigers to do it again in 2049.

23. Utah

24. TCU

25. South Florida. This is the fourth Florida team on my ballot. Were it a vote on the states with the most people who get attacked by alligators while hiding from the police, or protecting their cars from hurricanes by parking them in their kitchens, or by keeping Burmese pythons as pets, Florida would never have a legitimate rival.

The fact the University of South Florida is 205 miles northwest of Miami will never not be funny.

OK, I see you Texas Tech and Texas A&M and Tulane and Kansas and Georgia Tech and USC and OMG, I really have to keep track of this for three more months?