Below is our BlogPoll ballot for the 5th week of the season (see all our BlogPoll ballots). Obviously lots of movement this week as upsets took place up and down the rankings. Two the teams we had on top or near it, Oklahoma and Florida, stayed up in the rankings because we simply do not see other teams powering through their conferences. It's a strange year so far. Oklahoma had their game in the bag and they let up on the pedal letting Colorado take the win. Florida looked average also and probably took Auburn lightly as well. SuC looked to be toying with the idea of playing hard but they looked disinterested. It was a bad week to take off and SuC got lucky they weren't a casualty.
The Big East did not disappoint with the 2 of the 3 remaining overrated teams West Virginia and Rutgers taking convincing losses, just as we said they would eventually. So they dropped heavily. South Florida seems to be the only Big East team that may do some damage.
Other moves include read more
Below is our BlogPoll ballot for the 4th week of the season (see all our BlogPoll ballots). There wasn't much movement at the top as one would expect, with all the favorites pulling out fairly easy victories. We still like Oklahoma at the top, and pretty much see this as a 3+ team race between OK, SuC and LSU, with Florida as the + team. By virtue of Penn State losing at Michigan and dropping 10 spots on our poll, West Virginia moved up a slot. But as we have been saying all year, we are not impressed with the Big East and still factor in the hype. West Virginia travels to South Florida Saturday for its first real test of the season. Louisville confirmed what we've been saying about the Big East by losing again, so they are out for good most likely. Rutgers moved up as well due to Penn St. and they won't start to hit the tough part of their schedule until a couple of weeks.
UCLA remains off the charts until Dorrell proves we belong. Even if we go 5-1 as we should (beating average-at-best OSU and a lame Notre Dame in the next two weeks) we will not put UCLA back on the list. Wisconsin did not impress in its home win over average Iowa. We see Wisconsin suffering some losses along the way so we are moving them down slowly. There is still a huge separation in quality at that point so we see a lot more movement from the plus 10 spot going forward. Nebraska dropped because they should have lost to Ball St. (Ball St. receiver missed wide open touchdown in closing minute) and it would have killed their season. Kentucky had the biggest move up this week, from not on the ballot all the way to #17 after proving their convincing win over Louisville was no fluke. They went into Arkansas and beat them soundly. Anyhow, here is our ballot: read more
Below is our BlogPoll ballot for the 3rd week of the season (see all our BlogPoll ballots). Not much to say, other than the obvious teams were taken out off the ballot. We still like Oklahoma at the top, and pretty much see this as a 3+ team race, with Florida at the + team.
UCLA is obviously off the charts … doesn't deserve to be recognized. All the smack talk just got spit right back in our faces. Thanks Karl. Thanks a lot. Ohio State is impressing more than Wisconsin or for that matter West Virginia. Again, the Big East is overrated and we have to account for that in our poll ballot. Louisville proved our point last week. Aside from the top 4 teams, and a few 2nd tier teams, we just don't see that much competition up at the top. There is a huge separation in quality at that point, and the quality is highly erratic, hence the big jumps. Anyhow, here is our ballot: read more
Below is our BlogPoll entry for week 2. We are keeping Oklahoma in at #1 and LSU at #2. Oklahoma continues to impress with their thumping of a Miami program that still has talent. LSU also impressed although we had our doubts about VaTech. Now our doubts are confirmed. Wisconsin got out of a scare, but we watched them pull away from Wazzu, so we left them unchanged. West Virginia we did not see, only highlights, but they let their game nearly get away from them. We continue to say the Big East is over-rated in our polls because they are going to end up highly ranked in the bigger polls. It's a pro-Big East bias we are calculating into our rankings along with hyped Louisville and Rutgers. We docked the Big East for West Virginia's near miss.
The drop-outs are the obvious losers of the week who were already low in the polls, including Boise St., TCU and Oregon State (embarrassing). We were surprised by the loss to South Florida by Auburn. We know S. Florida is good but Auburn should have taken care of business at home. They have 8 home games(!) and only 4 away games - all, however, to ranked teams including LSU, Florida, Arkansas, and Georgia. They're probably out for good. We were not impressed by our UCLA Bruins enough to put them ahead of any team on our rankings that are ahead of them. An argument can be made that many of the teams behind UCLA are better too … we will see. Georgia Tech and South Carolina impressed. Boston College still looks mediocre to us so we couldn't slide them up too much higher, and they play Georgia Tech next week and have away games at Notre Dame, VaTech, and Clemson, so they may not hang around too much in the rankings. Hawaii nearly lost hence the dock. So, here are our rankings for Week 2: read more
Editor's Note: We submitted our BlogPoll ballot last night immediately following the Clemson win over Florida State - before the major polls came out. We wrote this post right after our submission and set the publish time of this post to just after noon today.
Below is our ballot for BlogPoll week 1. As you may note, we have Michigan out of the top 25 for obvious reasons. You just can't lose at a historic stadium like the Big House, at home, against a Div 1-AA (Championship SubDivision - whatever) team and not have serious problems. Finger-pointing and locker-room dissention will undoubtedly take a toll on an already disappointing situation. Can they bounce back?? Sure. But will they? They have tough games immediately ahead to prove they can. Next up, Oregon.
We also have Florida State dropping out after that embarrassing performance last night against Clemson. This may be Bowden's swan song and we may see some huge changes in big-time programs at the end of this year. As for the number 1 ranking, Texas disappointed so we dropped them from the top spot. We can't see them sorting things out and beating an awesome looking Oklahoma. So we moved up Oklahoma to #1. Stoops and Brown may be undefeated when they meet, so we still have Texas high up in the rankings, but they will have to earn the top spot again. We have the mid-majors and Big East ranked higher than where we really think they should be but because of fluff schedules and bias they are going to end up ranked higher by the BCS. The rest of the teams move up as expected.
Here is our BlogPoll submission for week 1 (disregard delta - not working): read more
Here is our entry for the pre-season BlogPoll rankings. We might still change them by the time the poll comes out tomorrow. If you have any comments, suggestions, opinions, or rants let us know. Our thinking behind this poll is pretty simple: The Big East teams have easy schedules so they get more love than they should in the polls; we can't give SuC a #1 rating - it's against the laws of nature, let them earn it; We think UCLA will end up with 3 losses, 2 towards the end of the season; and the rest is pretty much dartboard material. Check it out: read more
