After a dominant victory over Virginia , USC has claimed the top spot in The Associated Press Top 25 Poll.

While former No. 1 Georgia opened its season with a glorified scrimmage against an FCS team (Formerly Div 1-AA) USC took a long trip across the country and battled it out against a BCS conference team coming away with a decisive 52-7 victory and staking their claim as a force to be reckoned with this coming season.

USC moves to No.1 In AP Poll

The move to No. 1 dropped Georgia and Ohio State the preseason No. 1 and 2 to second and third respectively.

The voting was extremely close with USC receiving 21 first place votes and 1,539 points. Georgia received 20 first place votes  and 1,506 points. Ohio state pulled in 15 first place votes and 1,497 points.

Ohio State opened its season with a 43-0 win over Youngstown State, while Georgia beat Georgia Southern 45-21.

It is very early in the season and polls don’t mean much after the first game…that is  unless you’re being moved out of or into the top 25. That was the case for a number of teams who had some dissapointing season openeres or some unexpeted victories.

Perhaps one of the most dissapointing performances came from Pittsburgh who entered the season at No. 25 in the AP poll and were expected to be a major player in the Big East Conference. Pitt lost its opening game to an unheraled Bowling Green team and were knocked out of the Top 25 when thte new poll came out Tuesday.

Clemson is another team that took a huge hit after their troubling loss to Alabama last week. The Tigers were dropped out of the Top 25 after being ranked ninth the opening week. Clemson was handled by Alabama 34-10  which jumped up 11 spots after its victory to claim the 13th spot.

Also falling out due to opening week loses were Virginia Tech and Tennessee. Tennessee lost a heart breaker to UCLA in overtime after tying the game on a 47 yard field goal at the end of regulation.  Virginia Tech dropped its opener to East Carolina 27-22.

There are a few teams out there that have to be excited about the new poll having jumped into the Top 25 for the first time this season. Among them are No. 21 Fresno State who defeated Rutgers in their opening game, No. 22 Utah,  No. 23 UCLA, and No. 24 South Carolina.

This marks the first time that a preseason No. 1 lost its spot in the opening week since Florida in 2001. The gators defeated Marshall 49-14, but No. 2 Miami beat Penn State 33-7 and secured the No. 1 spot.