Steppe’s 2024 Week 2 AP ballot: Notre Dame, USC move up with quality wins

IOWA CITY — College football is back at last, and there were some great Week 1 matchups — most notably No. 23 USC’s last-minute win over No. 13 LSU and No. 7 Notre Dame’s 23-13 win over No. 20 Texas A&M at a hostile Kyle Field.

It also had some less-than-captivating games, like Ole Miss’ 76-0 throttling of Furman, Alabama’s 63-0 rout of Western Kentucky and Utah’s 49-0 blowout over Southern Utah.

My ballot for this week’s AP Poll puts a premium on the teams that performed well against premium competition. (Sorry, Alabama, I don’t count Conference USA’s Western Kentucky as premium competition.)

Notre Dame captured the best road win of any team in the country so far this season, and its rise on my ballot reflects that. Penn State also moved up after going on the road and beating West Virginia by 22 points — West Virginia’s biggest home loss since 2021.

Ole Miss and Alabama could end up finishing this year ahead of the Fighting Irish and Nittany Lions, but the AP asks voters to “base your vote on performance, not reputation.” Notre Dame and Penn State’s resumes, at least for now, trump the resumes of the teams that faced Furman and Western Kentucky.

Oregon fell on my ballot to No. 8 after its 24-14 win over Idaho in Week 1. Yes, it was a win. But needing a late-fourth-quarter touchdown to break away from an FCS team of Idaho’s stature is not befitting of a top-five team.

USC made the biggest jump of any team on my ballot after the Trojans’ neutral-site win over LSU, which I had in the top 10 on my preseason ballot. Miller Moss answered questions about USC’s quarterback position in the post-Caleb Williams era with his 378 passing yards while completing 75 percent of his passes.

Miami (Fla.) also made a significant jump on my ballot after an impressive 24-point win at Florida. The last time a team went into Gainesville and won by 24-plus points was when Adele’s “Easy on Me” was the Billboard No. 1 song, and that team was top-ranked Georgia.

Elsewhere in the Sunshine State, I dropped Florida State from my ballot. Losing to Georgia Tech — a team with only one winning season in the last five years — in Week 0 was bad. Failing to stop Boston College at home was even worse.

My ballot is below ahead of the poll’s Week 2 release at 1 p.m. Central Time:

John Steppe’s Week 2 AP ballot

Week 2 AP Poll (released Tuesday afternoon)

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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