A look inside the AP Poll: Week 3

That's more like it.

After completely dominating Florida Atlantic in a 44-0 rout, the Spartans were rewarded with more confidence from the voters in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll, moving up two spots to No. 15. (MSU also is No. 15 in the Coaches Poll.

Most voters had MSU in the 14-16 range, which seems about right. MSU's highest ranking was No. 11 from Scott Wolf of the Los Angeles Daily News. Wolf moved the Spartans up two spots from week two and had them at No. 15 in the preseason.

Surprisingly, there is another voter who doesn't have MSU ranked, and that is Rob Long of Fox-1370 Radio in Baltimore. Somehow, Long dropped the Spartans from No. 21 in week two to unranked in week three after giving up one first down to FAU. Figure that out.

Who did Long jump over MSU? Arizona State (17), Michigan (21), USF (22), Baylor (24) and TCU (25). Also, Long didn't move Ohio State after a close call at home against Toledo.

Through three weeks of polls, five different voters have not ranked MSU at some point. The two voters who had MSU unranked last week, Mike DiRocco of The Florida Times-Union and Mike Hlas of The Cedar Rapids Gazette, moved MSU up to No. 19 and No. 20 on their ballots, respectively.

Bizarre.

As for local voters, John Niyo of The Detroit News had the Spartans at No. 14 and Jeremy Sampson of WLIX-TV had them at No. 15.

As always, thanks to Pollspeak for the great site.