Football: First Top 10 of October

This week's ballots from our staff (in order after the official listing: Neate Sager, myself, Kevin Garbuio, Jared Book, Andrew Bucholtz):

1. Western — 1st, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd. It was their closest win of the season ... but they still beat a top-5 team by three scores.
2. Laval — 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 1st. Second place overall for the first time all year. The last time Laval gave up as many as 38 points in a regular-season game was almost exactly ten years ago, though they did beat Concordia 59-7 a month after that. Also lost to McMaster 41-38 recently in a game you may remember.
3. Calgary — 3rd, 4th, 4th, 4th, 3rd. Good position to be in this week, with a road game vs. the second-place team with 12 points to give, then a pair of home games vs. below-.500 teams.
4. Guelph — 5th, 6th, 3rd, 5th, 5th. Two of the five of us put them ahead of Queen's. They miss Western this year, so that helps inflate the record somewhat.
5. Queen's — 4th, 3rd, 5th, 3rd, 6th. By our standards, this is disagreement. Personally I didn't think that much less of Queen's after losing to Western.
6. Saskatchewan — 7th, unranked, 8th, 8th, 4th. See earlier comment about how I never know where to put this team. Their only loss is on the road at Calgary, but three of their wins are by just a combined 14 points.
7. Montreal — 6th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 7th. No points in the second half vs. Sherbrooke and just a TD, rouge, and safety in the first half? I'm not sure why I have them 5th.
8. Bishop's — 8th, unranked, 7th, 9th, 8th. As noted, only the third team (if my research is complete) who have put 38 on Laval; the other two went on to win the Vanier and lose the Dunsmore. You'd have to think the Gaiters would take even the latter result at the beginning of this year. A note of concern: with Concordia and McGill comprising half their schedule this year, and squeaking out two Sherbrooke wins, they are basically 6-0 in those games alone, when most teams on this list would be no worse than 5-1.
9. McMaster — I was the only one to rank them, at 10th. I had Windsor higher, though, which leads me to note that, just as there is no such thing as a bad call that goes against the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, there is no such thing as a bad call that goes against Laurier (he said, looking for some reason to justify spending five years at Waterloo).
10. Manitoba — Only Andrew ranked them, and he put them 9th.