To objectively say who the best teams in the country are, ESPN has a couple of tools to look at: Team Efficiencies and their Football Power Index.  Team Efficiencies “are based on the point contributions of each unit to the team’s scoring margin, on a per-play basis.  The values are adjusted for strength of schedule and down-weighted for ‘garbage time.'” Football Power Index “is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward.”

There is also an interesting stat ESPN has called Strength of Record. This stat attempts to see how a team presumably ranked 25th would do if they had your schedule, which takes into account home and road games. As defined by ESPN, “Strength of Record takes strength of schedule a step further by accounting for how a team actually did against its schedule. Strength of Record simply cares about the difficulty of a team’s schedule and the result (win or loss).”

Here are the current rankings, where you can find everything from the polls to the advanced stats.