WEEKLY VANDERBILT NATIONAL RANKING UPDATE

The Commodores drop out of the Top 25 after a solid month in the rankings. It's really nothing to mourn about, except for the fact that they might have stayed in the poll if Georgia had missed a field goal at the end of the game. You know, a seven-point loss to a the No. 10 team looks a lot better than a 10-point loss, at least to fickle pollsters.

But the real thing that damaged the Dores: Last week's loss to Mississippi State. This week's loss to Georgia was actually a quality loss, but it gave them two losses for the season, actually forcing pollsters to look at who they lost to and who the other two-loss teams lost to. Two-loss teams that survived the cut were:

• Missouri, who lost in the past two weeks to No. 7 Oklahoma State and No. 1 Texas.
• Kansas, with losses to No. 14 South Florida and No. 4 Oklahoma.

In the Associated Press poll, Vanderbilt finished 28th in the poll, behind only one other two-loss team, Virginia Tech, which has losses to East Carolina and Boston College.

In the USA Today poll, Vanderbilt slipped to 32nd, finishing behind these two-loss teams:
• Michigan State, which lost to Cal and on Saturday 45-7 to No. 12 Ohio State. So how are the Spartans ahead of Vanderbilt, which lost 24-14 to No. 10 Georgia?
• North Carolina, which lost to unranked Virginia Tech and Virginia.
• Oregon, which lost to Boise State and USC.

It certainly didn't help Vanderbilt that Mississippi State lost 34-3 to Tennessee.

Anyway, here's how the conference fared (AP listed first, USA Today listed second:

1. Alabama 2/2
2. Florida 6/4
3. Georgia 9/9
4. LSU 11/11
5. Vanderbilt 28/32
6. Kentucky 31/33
12. Auburn NR/NR
12. Arkansas NR/NR
12. Ole Miss NR/NR
12. Miss State NR/NR
12. South Carolina NR/NR
12. Tennessee NR/NR