The AP Top 25 voter who had a weird ballot last week has changed his tune on the Tennessee Vols.

A week ago, The Athletic’s Ralph Russo didn’t have the Volunteers in his top 25 after their 45-24 road win over Georgia Tech.

Instead, he had Oregon ranked after a loss to Oklahoma State. And he had Western Michigan ranked above Michigan, among other oddities.

This week, though, Russo has seen the (orange) light.

The longtime sports writer has Tennessee at No. 15 on his latest AP Top 25 ballot.

Russo noted that part of his back-and-forth on Tennessee is because the Vols haven’t played elite competition yet.

“The trickiest part of ranking teams this week was wrestling with where to put teams that have lost close games to good teams (LSU, Louisville, SMU, Houston) against undefeated teams that haven’t faced stiff competition yet (Utah, Penn State, Tennessee, USC – though at least the Vols and Trojans have played road games),” wrote Russo. “I have been fairly aggressive moving teams in and out and up and down, especially in the middle to back end of the poll. Utah, Tennessee and Mississippi State were on my first out list last week. With Texas A&M, Virginia and Boise State opening up slots this week, I didn’t just move the Bulldogs, Vols and Utes in; debuted each this week on my ballot in the teens.”

The top 25 is still mostly a guessing game at this point — we just don’t have enough information to accurately rank teams due to all of the “pay games” that have been played against lesser competition.

But that will change as conference games start getting ramped up.