The Sunday polls arrive the way weather does, without apology and with no regard for anyone’s plans. Houston checked its forecast this week and found it improved.

At Houston practice, when someone turns the speakers up, one song comes on that is fitting for the Coogs climb: “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” the old McFadden & Whitehead anthem about a long wait that finally ends. For years it was a soundtrack, the thing a team plays to make the sweating go quicker. This week it picked up a scoreboard. The Cougars are on the move, and the proof isn’t coming out of a speaker.

It is printed in the polls. Houston is No. 20 in the AP Top 25, up two places from No. 22. In the US LBM Coaches Poll the Cougars are No. 18, up one from No. 19. Two sets of voters who agree on very little looked at a team that went to Kansas State and won by 19, and both reached the same conclusion. Anyone who wanted to argue the point would have had to explain the second half.

Start with who had the ball. Houston held it for 34 minutes and 49 seconds. Kansas State had it for 25 minutes and change, and spent most of that time hoping to be handed a reason to stay interested. The Cougars ran 43 times for 233 yards, better than five yards a try, and gained 475 in all, to 299 for the Wildcats. They turned it over zero times. They were not sacked once. Houston picked up 25 first downs to Kansas State’s 19, which is the sort of number a coach reads quietly to himself on the plane home.

Conner Weigman threw four touchdown passes, and all four went to Overmyer. They covered 1, 2, 8 and 2 yards, which is to say they were scored in the neighborhood where defenders gather and the grass gets rough. Weigman finished 19 of 30 for 242 yards. Hughes added a 13-yard run for the only other Houston touchdown. Jonathan Dimas kicked five extra points and missed nothing. The Cougars led 7-3 after one quarter, 21-3 at the half, and 35-9 after three. The game was a conversation that stopped being close sometime before the third quarter.

The defense did its work without ceremony. It sacked the Kansas State quarterback twice, put four ballcarriers down behind the line, and held the Wildcats to 117 rushing yards on 29 carries. Kansas State got both of its touchdowns through the air, one in the third quarter and one with under four minutes left, by which point the result had already been filed. Houston’s defense picked off a two-point try, which tells you what kind of day it was for the home team. The Cougars did give the officials plenty to count, eight penalties for 74 yards. Houston also missed a field goal, and one of its three punts traveled 74 yards, a distance usually reserved for apologies.

Now the rest of the polls, where the news is that nothing stays where you left it. Georgia is No. 1. When the top rung changes hands, the rest of the ladder gets a shake, and teams that played well find themselves a rung or two higher whether or not they asked. Houston is one of those teams.

Then there is BYU, which stands at No. 8, unbeaten at 5-0 and the highest-ranked team in the Big 12. The Cougars of Provo have not moved, and in a week when so much did, staying put counts as an accomplishment. The Big 12’s best team is a place on the map, and everyone else in the league is measuring the distance.

For Houston, the distance is shorter than it looks. Oklahoma State, No. 18 in the AP, comes to Houston on Saturday, October 17, with kickoff at 6:30 Central. The Cougars sit at No. 20 in that poll, two places and one Saturday night away. It is also the same number Houston now wears in the coaches’ ranking, which is the kind of coincidence that makes a game feel like a negotiation.

Polls are written in pencil. This one has Houston at No. 20 and Oklahoma State at No. 18, and by next Sunday somebody will have reached for an eraser. The Cowboys arrive Saturday night carrying one. The song will be loud, as it always is, but a song can only tell a team how to feel. Houston will have to bring the pen.