We’re back with another week of the SB Nation and State of the U Fan Pule Top 25 rankings. Here is what the national picture looks like:

Welcome to the top spot, LSU! As long as both teams hold serve this week, next week’s Alabama-LSU game is going to be the game of the year. I saw some people talking on Twitter about rigging the AP poll so those teams are tied at #1....so the game would be 1 vs 1. That would be cool. Even if that doesn’t happen, 1 vs 2 will be a pretty big draw.

Let’s check in with how things look in the SOTU FanPulse top 25 this week:

State of the U Illustration by Mike Meredith

We were one of the sites that still has Alabama at #1. We weren’t alone in this, but overall, LSU had enough votes to take the top spot. And as for the rest, I’m fine with it. I’d like Miami to win enough to get back into at least our site’s rankings, but we’ll see about that.

Last week, the confidence poll was pretty low. At just 13.2%, the Canes were one of the lowest rated teams in the country following the loss to Georgia Tech.

But things change! Miami went into Pittsburgh and beat a tough and talented Panthers team to even the season record at 4-4 and moved to 2-3 in the ACC. Had Miami not dropped one of the bad losses they had earlier in the ACC schedule — at UNC, vs VT, vs GT — they would be tied for first in the Coastal. The margins are very small, as you can tell. But, the point of all that is to say that this week the confidence poll rebounded this week.

Your votes in the confidence poll raised the rating from 13.2% positive to 48.7% positive in the direction of the program. That’s big. And, with a win at Florida State this weekend, that would surely continue to increase. But, with a loss to the Noles, things would probably slide downward significantly.

If you look at the chart of the confidence poll, you see it’s been a volatile season for the Canes to this point. That will happen when you’re a .500 team. But hopefully things continue to take an upward trajectory. We’ll see what happens.

Go Canes