1. How far should South Carolina fall?

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, we've lost two straight, the last one by an embarrassing margin. On the other hand, we've played two straight games against top-ten teams, and the Florida margin was marred by a bizarre spate of turnovers. We're obviously not a top ten team right now, but we're also among the best two-loss teams in the land, and we're arguably better than many one-loss teams, such as Georgia, Clemson, and Texas Tech. Should I vote us higher than any of these one-loss teams, or should I wait for the season to sort it out for us?

2. Rank the top four.

I'm tending to go with Alabama, Florida, Kansas St., and Oregon, in that order. Obviously, the tricky question is K-State and Oregon. Oregon gets lots of the style points, but K-State has a much better resume that includes some impressive wins over good competition. In any event, Oregon has several tough games remaining on its schedule, and those games will give the Ducks a chance to make their case.

3. Rank these two-loss teams: South Carolina, Stanford, Michigan, TAMU, WVU, Texas.

Like I said, I like USC out of this group, but consider that TAMU played Florida and LSU closer than we did. The Aggies could have easily won either game. WVU and Texas are both teams with good offenses but crap defenses, and K-State figured out WVU's offense to do some degree. Stanford has a great win against Southern Cal and a controversial close loss to Notre Dame. Michigan is probably my pick for worst out of this group due to the lack of good wins. What do you think?