LSU snatches the crown from Alabama in this week’s FanPulse top 25

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across college sports. Each week during the college sports season, we will send out polls to plug in fans to each team. Tar Heel fans can sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

As as get deeper and deeper into the college football season, the FanPulse top 25 voting gets more and more interesting. This week there is a new heir to the college football throne, at least as far as our poll is concerned, and they reside in Baton Rouge. Let’s go ahead and take a look at the voting results for Week 9:

The LSU Tigers are now the number one team in the country according to the FanPulse poll, and it’s likely that this is in direct result of them handling business against #9 Auburn. Alabama won their game this week in dominating fashion, yes, but it was also against a helpless and unranked Arkansas team. This development is exciting to witness, and it is exactly the kind of chaos that the FanPulse survey was designed for.

To turn attention back to the ACC, Virginia was once again eliminated from the top 25 after their loss to Louisville. The Cavaliers have now lost three games this season, and are tied atop the ACC Coastal Division with UNC. This weekend’s game will be a big game for both teams, and in UNC’s case it will be the difference between going into the second bye week with some shred of optimism about their bowl chances, or calling this season a rebuild year and looking ahead to next season.

Before we dive too deep into UNC and how the fanbase is feeling to this point, let’s take a look at the Tar Heel Blog top 25 poll:

As we can see, the results are a little different than the national FanPulse results. Noticeable differences include LSU and Ohio State being tied for 2nd, Clemson being ranked No. 5 instead of No. 4, and Iowa is replaced by Virginia Tech as the 25th best team. It pains me personally to see Virginia Tech on this list, as I still haven’t gotten over the loss last week. However, the good news is that we at least got the Victory Bell back, right?

Now that the poll results are out of the way, let’s take a look at how fans are feeling going into this Saturday’s game against Virginia:

As we can see, things are looking a little better after last week’s disappointing loss to the Hokies. The increase in confidence is perfectly in line with how impressive the win was against Duke in that it didn’t move the needle a whole lot in terms of whether or not this team is improving (as a complete unit, the defense stepped up big time), but also a win is a win. Obviously that is not to take anything away from the Tar Heels, who found a way to win despite a lackluster performance from freshman stud Sam Howell, but it just means that there is still some progress to be made if they want to finish out the season strong.

What do you guys think about this week’s poll results? Let us know in the comments below, and as always, if you haven’t already signed up for FanPulse you can do so by clicking the link at the beginning of this article. Also stay tuned, because we will be expanding the survey into college basketball, and we want your voices to be heard loud and proud as this team begins their quest to get back to the Final Four.

Go Heels!