I saw someone posted about the Smith world and the Mid Majors that were in the rankings, so I decided to do some looking around in Knight.
In the current rankings, there are three schools in the top 25, not from a BCS school: Delaware State (me), Arkansas State, and Dartmouth.
I believe that is 14, 23, and the 25th ranked schools, respectively. < - I didn't write it down and my short term memory sucks.
There are three other schools getting votes: Rider, San Diego, and UT Chattanooga.
I decided to look at the real life rankings at this time last season. In week 7 of the season, pretty much all teams had played 11 or 12 games, which is where we are now. Here is what I found:
AP: Temple, New Mexico, UAB
Votes: Gonzaga, Dayton, BYU, Wichita State
Coaches: New Mexico, Temple, Gonzaga, Butler
Votes: UNLV, BYU, UAB, Dayton, William & Mary
For the votes, I only counted 10 schools deep.
It looks like HD rankings are basically the AP version of voting. The Coaches Poll is a little more favorable for the little guys, but not much.
To me, it looks like HD rankings and real life rankings are pretty much on par from what I looked at for the whole season, when compared to the AP Poll. I think that seeing this comparison can help some people realize that while some Mid Major schools can play with the big boys, not every Mid Major school that ends up with 20 wins at the end of the season deserves to be in the polls or even getting a lot of votes, if any.