I've been voting in The Associated Press top 25 college football poll for seven or eight years and the job certainly isn't getting any easier.

  My top 25 has taken a beating the first three weeks of the season, but I'm not alone.

  Since the State Journal started publishing my weekly votes this season, feedback from fans has understandably increased.

  I figured the blog might be a good way to consolidate all the phone calls and e-mails about my vote. I'd be happy to try and answer reasonable questions about my thinking behind my vote.

  If you want to sound off, this is as good a place as any.

  The big local news in Sunday's poll is that the Badgers dropped two spots, to ninth. They stayed at seventh in the coaches' poll, which doesn't seem to have as many dramatic swings as the writers' poll.

  I dropped the Badgers three spots to 10th on my ballot. The reasoning? I couldn't find enough other decent teams to drop them even farther. (Nah, just kidding about that. I'm sure UW fans will understand.)

  I try not to overreact to one game, so I didn't hold the narrow loss at UNLV against UW. But to follow up that performance with a 45-31 victory over The Citadel -- which is not even an upper-level (former) Division I-AA team -- at home, no less, I couldn't in good conscience rate the Badgers any higher.

  Frankly, right now, they are not playing like a top-10 team but they'll remain there for now on my ballot.

  Here's my ballot this week, if you want to tee off.

1, USC
2, LSU
3, Oklahoma
4, Florida
5, West Virginia
6, Texas
7, California
8. Rutgers
9. Ohio State
10, Wisconsin
11, Oregon
12, Penn State
13, South Carolina
14, Louisville
15, Boston College
16, Virginia Tech
17, Georgia
18, Clemson
19, Texas A&M
20, South Florida
21, Arkansas
22, Hawaii
23, UCLA
24, Georgia Tech
25, Nebraska