Alabama received 54 of 60 first-place votes from the media panel and 1,491 points to easily outdistance second-ranked Ohio State in the Associated Press Top 25 released Saturday.

BYU is moving closer to leaving the Mountain West Conference, becoming a football independent and re-joining the Western Athletic Conference in all other sports by a Sept. 1 deadline to withdraw from the MWC for the 2011 season, multiple sources said Wednesday. "I'm not sure how it could stop now unless BYU gets nervous," one source with knowledge of the situation said.

Former Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach will call games on television as he pursues a lawsuit over his firing from the school. Cable network CBS College Sports announced Monday that Leach will work as an analyst this season.

New USC athletic director Pat Haden says Reggie Bush apologized to him and expressed regret in a phone call last week. "He's really contrite," Haden said, according to USA Today. "He knows he made a series of mistakes. It wasn't just one mistake. It was a series of mistakes." Bush, a running back for the Saints, has not been stripped of the Heisman Trophy he won in 2005, though USC has returned Bush's Heisman given to the school. Two trophies are awarded for each recipient.

Alabama is ranked first in the first USA Today Coaches' Poll of 2010. Ohio State, Florida, Texas and Boise State are ranked second through fifth. Virginia Tech, who will face Boise State on Sept. 6th, is ranked sixth and TCU is seventh.

The Big Ten has selected Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium as the proposed site to host the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game in 2011. The league announced Thursday afternoon that it will begin a 30-day period to negotiate a one-year agreement with Indiana Sports Corp and Lucas Oil Stadium. After that agreement is in place, the league will conduct a thorough process to find a home for the game in 2012 and beyond. "We felt at this time it was important to identify a site for the first championship game and then spend more time with other cities and venues with respect to both our basketball tournaments and the football championship games in the future," Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said.