Sunday, October 19, 2008

Blogpoll ballot, Week 8

The who, where, and why of this week's ballot....

- The top six remains unchanged, except for that I tried to move Texas up beyond #1 and am not allowed to do that.

- Florida drops three spots through no fault of their own except not scheduling a game this weekend. USC, Ohio State, and Texas Tech leapfrog them by virtue of winning.

- Ohio State and USC. I've had my internal struggles about these two and they keep following each other around the ballot. USC was going to drop below OSU this weekend because OSU has two extra wins, which is a plus, and just firebombed Michigan State. But honestly, that is OSU's best win this year, while USC has, you know, OSU as a notch in their bedpost. Also, the UVA game. Another internal struggle - do I look at this from the perspective of the UVA blogger, who knows good and well that the UVA team that showed up in the first four games was Mr. Hyde and this one is Dr. Jekyll? Or do I look at it dispassionately and see that USC trounced a team which is now 4-3 and has some decent wins under their belt? I went the computer route and gave USC higher marks for that game than before now that we have a winning record. That's probably the difference - if we were like 2-5 now instead of 4-3, USC would be below OSU.

- Tulsa skyrockets up the rankings because of the principle that even if you have played nothing but bad teams, if you have curb-stomped them all into oblivion and not lost then you deserve to be rewarded. Plus I got starry-eyed over the Hurricane Of Many Colors when I realized they put up almost 800 yards and only bothered trying for three quarters. Jeez. That is an offense.

- The last six spots came down to eight pretty evenly-matched teams. Northwestern and LSU are the ones that didn't make the cut. LSU needed to really put a beatdown on South Carolina and it didn't happen. LSU's only decent wins are against teams you could charitably call halfway decent.

- The BC-VT-GT merry-go-round gave me fits. BC beat VT, which beat GT, which beat BC, it's a muddle. I think the order they're in makes sense. BC has only the one loss to Georgia Tech; VT lost to BC and also to ECU but did beat UNC; GT is last because Gardner-Webb. But they're ranked now, which they couldn't say last week.

Any suggestions for change made between now and around Monday morning can be taken into consideration for the preliminary ballot; any made between then and about Tuesday evening/early Wednesday morning can be taken into consideration for the final ballot and the breakdown.

- Change 1: USF gets bumped from 14th to 17th.


RankTeamDelta
1Texas --
2Penn State --
3Alabama --
4Oklahoma State --
5Oklahoma --
6Utah --
7Southern Cal 3
8Ohio State 3
9Texas Tech 3
10Florida 3
11Ball State 2
12Tulsa 6
13Georgia 6
14Boise State 3
15Missouri 2
16TCU 8
17South Florida 4
18Michigan State 4
19Brigham Young 11
20Boston College 6
21Virginia Tech 6
22Georgia Tech 4
23Minnesota 2
24North Carolina 8
25Vanderbilt 2



Dropped Out: California (#20), Connecticut (#22).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what's the rationale for leaving pitt out, but putting south florida way up in the middle of the pack? Pitt's got respectable wins over Iowa and (kinda) Navy, and of course their big one over s. fla themselves, while south florida really only has the one win over kansas, who despite looking respectable hasn't actually _beaten_ anyone.

Mike said...

That's very kind of you to leave UNC in the top 25.

Brendan said...

Pitt is out for a couple reasons:

- Bowling Green.
- Iowa's not really that great a win IMO. It's looking better as time goes on but it's not really much. It was an ugly game to watch, too.
- Pitt struggled against Syracuse, which is a truly brutal team, and didn't look so hot against Buffalo, either.

USF, I could probably knock down a notch or two. Pitt, I want to see a little more from. Their last two games haven't outweighed what I consider to be a pretty ugly four-game stretch to start the season.