Blogpoll ballot, Week 14

This is, admittedly, a 5-minute, half-assed effort at a ballot. There are probably beaucoup flaws in this thing. This is because the ballot is posted under the effects of 180 proof rageohol, brought on by spending 17 hours sharing the highway with 50,000 drooling, jibbering, bedwetting short-bus riders to whom somebody gave keys to a car. (More on that later, as well as maybe some actual UVA content too if we're really lucky.) I make no effort, for now, at any kind of justification - I'll do some actual science-ey stuff on Monday and fix it. For now I decided to prioritize "getting a ballot in by the deadline for the preliminary posting" over "shower and sleep." If there's any commentary to throw in for consideration for when I go about putting some actual effort into this one, by all means.

EDIT. OK, all fixed. Things are better now. Couple teams got shifted around. TCU gets to be a top 10 team. I also booted Oregon State in favor of Iowa. Iowa's four losses are by a total of 12 points, and three are to ranked teams. OSU hasn't been competitive in two of their losses, and hey, guess which team beat Penn State and which didn't?

Oh, and yeah. The Oklahoma-or-Texas question? It's interesting to note that if this were the ACC or SEC, Texas would be representing and not Oklahoma. Those two conferences have the BCS tiebreaker too, but there's a clause that says if the top two teams involved are within five spots, then head-to-head rules. It's an interesting idea and probably the right way to go, overall. But in this case, the BCS-sters got it right. Oklahoma's managed to average over 50 points a game this year, and their out-of-conference schedule turned out to be not that slouchy, especially as compared to Texas. In their last four games, they've rolled off 60+ points, and it's not like they're running up the score. In the three games before the Okie State game, they scored 62, 66, and 65, and that's with only one touchdown in the fourth quarter. Not each. Total. And it happened at the very beginning of the Texas Tech fourth quarter on a drive that started at the TT 38. They've dominated. They'll crush Missouri's souls, which will take away one of the biggest arguments Texas had.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	--
2	Oklahoma	2
3	Texas	1
4	Florida	1
5	Penn State	--
6	Southern Cal	--
7	Utah	1
8	Texas Tech	1
9	Ohio State	--
10	TCU	5
11	Boise State	--
12	Oklahoma State	2
13	Georgia Tech	6
14	Ball State	2
15	Missouri	3
16	Michigan State	3
17	Brigham Young	--
18	Georgia	8
19	Cincinnati	3
20	Oregon	3
21	Boston College	--
22	Northwestern	2
23	Pittsburgh	3
24	Mississippi	2
25	Iowa	1

Dropped Out: Oregon State (#18), Florida State (#20), Western Michigan (#25).