Mid-Major College Football Top 10, Week 7: Fresno State and NIU Lead the Pack

Here at Hustle Belt, we're teaming up with a handful of other SB Nation blogs which cover non-AQ conferences football teams to create a mid-major college football poll, aptly named: The Mid-Major College Football Top 10 Poll. You won't find Alabama, Oregon or Ohio State in this poll; only members of the four non-AQ FBS conferences (and independents that aren't named Notre Dame) are eligible for this one.

Each week one voting member from Mountain West Connection (the MWC Blog), UB Bull Run (the Buffalo Blog), Vanquish the Foe (the BYU blog), Cowboy Altitude (the Wyoming blog) and Hustle Belt will submit a Top 10 ballot ranking the Top 10 best mid-major college football teams. The rankings are given point totals, with a No. 1 ranking equaling 10 points, and a No. 10 ranking equaling 1 point. Then we tally the ballots and add up the scores to come up with the Mid-Major College Football Top 10 Poll.

In the first poll, Fresno State leads the pack with the Northern Illinois Huskies not far behind as the clear cut No 1 and No. 2. After that things drop off, with the No. 3 school, Ball State, receiving 12 less points than NIU. No. 3 through 5 is relatively close, separated by a mere three points. Interestingly the MAC leads the poll in terms of most teams represented with four, and all in the top seven. The next closest is the MWC with three.

Without further adieu, here is the initial Mid-Major College Football Top 10 Poll of the 2013 season (the numbers in parenthesis next to the point totals represent the number of first place votes a team received):