2014 college football rankings, Week 13: Alabama, Oregon lead composite top 25

With the arrival of November comes college football chaos, and we’ve seen that play out in a major way this year. A staggering 10 Top 25 teams lost Saturday, from No. 1 Mississippi State to No. 24 Texas A&M, but how would the rankings dominoes fall?

Some big questions emerged from Week 12’s pile of bodies. How far would Mississippi State fall after their loss to Alabama? (No. 4, it turns out.) Could the Tide jump all the way up to No. 1 in the polls? (No.) Would TCU suffer from a relatively lackluster win against Kansas? (Yes.) Would Florida State be rewarded for a tough comeback against a red-hot Miami team, or punished for another close victory against an unranked opponent? (Rewarded, up to No. 1 in the polls.) How far would Arizona State fall after losing in the cloak of late-night Pac-12 action? (Pretty far.)

We have some answers now, with the polls and computers all out. The official Playoff rankings come out Tuesday (here are the 11 big final scores that’ll change those), but we’ll try to hold you over until then with these!

The Associated Press Top 25: The longest-running and best-respected human poll. Didn’t have any official bearing on the latter years of the BCS, and won’t have any official bearing on the Playoff. Expect it to set the course for the committee, however, as most outlets (including SB Nation) will use the AP’s rankings as the standard until the committee takes over in late October. Usually comes out Sundays around 2 p.m. ET.

The USA Today Coaches Poll: Formerly part of the BCS, and now just a poll. It tends to be more conservative than the AP’s. Though polling athletic departments in order to rank other athletic departments is dubious, we still want multiple human polls in here, and it’s the other big one. Releases early Sunday afternoons.

The Massey computer composite: A collection of ... every rating out there. By including it here, we’re giving extra weight to the two human polls, since they’re already two of the dozens of ratings included in the Massey. It changes over the course of the week as more rankings arrive, so we’ve included the latest version as of publication.

Football Outsiders’ F/+ rating: A synthesis of ratings by smart persons Bill Connelly and Brian Fremeau and our personal go-to overall team stat. It tends to come out later than the others.