Don't have to worry about that for a while yet though. Here's the ballot - my justifications come afterwards.
 | ||
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas Tech |  7 |
| 2 | Penn State | -- |
| 3 | Alabama | -- |
| 4 | Texas |  3 |
| 5 | Oklahoma State | 1 |
| 6 | Oklahoma | 1 |
| 7 | Florida | 3 |
| 8 | Southern Cal | 1 |
| 9 | Utah | 3 |
| 10 | Ohio State | 1 |
| 11 | Ball State | -- |
| 12 | TCU | 2 |
| 13 | Missouri | 2 |
| 14 | Michigan State | 3 |
| 15 | Boise State | 1 |
| 16 | Georgia Tech | 7 |
| 17 | Brigham Young | 3 |
| 18 | Georgia | 6 |
| 19 | California | 5 |
| 20 | North Carolina | 1 |
| 21 | Tulsa | 8 |
| 22 | Florida State | 1 |
| 23 | Maryland | 3 |
| 24 | Northwestern | 2 |
| 25 | West Virginia | 1 |
Dropped Out: Minnesota (#18), Connecticut (#22), Oregon (#25).
- It's not just a knee-jerk reaction to last night's game that puts Texas Tech at the top. It was a fair fight between Texas Tech, Alabama, and Penn State, and Texas Tech came out on top, fairly easy actually. Here's why:
- Marquee wins. For Texas Tech, it's now Texas. Penn State has Ohio State, and Alabama has Georgia. There's a clear hierarchy between those three.
- Quality of other wins. Alabama has a couple scrapes with Ole Miss and UK. Penn State has a close one with Purdue, and Texas Tech narrowly escaped against Nebraska. Again, there's a pretty clear hierarchy here, and it lines up.
- Okie State still gets to stay above Oklahoma, for the same reasons as last week. Oklahoma remains above Florida because I remain sufficiently impressed by the TCU win and besides, Florida lost to Mississippi.
- F'n A, Georgia. I tend to punish lightly for close losses to high-quality teams, but by the same token, screw you if you won't even put up a fight. Yes, UGA's only two blemishes are top-10 teams, but take Missouri. Also two losses to top-10 teams, but they were actually competitive in those games. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs have been successfully trained to sit, heel, roll over, and especially, play dead. #18 makes them essentially the worst good team in the country.
- All three-loss teams are out, so unfortunately there are 7 spots left and 14 not-really-deserving teams remaining. WMU, LSU, Pitt, CMU, and Air Force are pretty easy to remove.
- RANT BREAK. Why do people continue to rank LSU at all, let alone top fricking fifteen??? Who the hell have they beaten? South Carolina and Auburn?! Big deal! Your mom beat Auburn! LSU got their asses handed to them by a team that's been getting their asses handed to them by teams worth a damn! Are we that dazzled by 41-3 over North Fricking Texas? If LSU stays within 20 of Alabama next week I will be shocked. I'm convinced that if LSU put on Mississippi State's uniforms and played the same schedule with the same results, they wouldn't get a sniff. To hell with LSU. Beat Alabama and I will rank them.
- OK, rant over. So there's 9 teams for 7 spots, all but one of which have two losses. You can see the lucky seven above. I'm fairly happy about the order of 19-22 after some rejiggerations there, but more than ready to hear suggestions. From 23-25, who the hell knows? 5 teams for 3 spots. The two left-out teams are Cincinnati and Minnesota. I guess. Maryland has that win over Cal and really only one bad loss (but a really bad one) so, 23. Between West Virginia, Cincinnati, Minnesota, and Northwestern, just toss a coin, man. They're like, 24a, 24b, 24c, and 24d. I ended up going with WVU and Northwestern because Northwestern beat Minny and WVU beat UConn while Cincy lost to them. Is Northwestern better than Cincy? WVU better than Minny or Northwestern? Damned if I know. I had iterations where I left off the Big Ten teams. Then I switched them and left off the Big East ones. I dunno any more. I decided to split the difference and put one of each, and give Northwestern the benefit of the doubt over WVU because they're 7-2 vice WVU's 6-2. Compelling cases for change, or even weak crappy ones, are more than welcome here because seriously, they all four kinda suck.
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