blogpoll ballot, week 1

Every year, this is basically my least favorite week to fill out a ballot. I damn near decided just to mail it in and submit the exact same one as last week: if the teams are gonna mail in week 1 of their schedule and just kind of ease into things, why can't I? But a couple of my ranked teams from the preseason bit it but good, so it's not like I could just leave UConn in there and still live with myself. Here's the ballot:

From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 2

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
2	Ohio St. Buckeyes	--
3	Wisconsin Badgers	1
4	Georgia Bulldogs	1
5	Miami Hurricanes	1
6	TCU Horned Frogs	1
7	Oklahoma Sooners	-4
8	USC Trojans	--
9	Boise St. Broncos	3
10	Florida Gators	-1
11	Iowa Hawkeyes	-1
12	Texas Longhorns	-1
13	Clemson Tigers	--
14	Virginia Tech Hokies	--
15	Stanford Cardinal	1
16	Oregon St. Beavers	1
17	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	1
18	Boston College Eagles	1
19	Nebraska Cornhuskers	1
20	Oregon Ducks	2
21	Florida St. Seminoles	3
22	South Carolina Gamecocks	3
23	LSU Tigers	--
24	Arizona Wildcats	--
25	Michigan Wolverines	--
Dropouts: North Carolina Tar Heels, Connecticut Huskies, Pittsburgh Panthers

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

I still mostly threw up my hands and said WTF, mate. I mean, at this point anyone who's nitpicking and overanalyzing wins against Samford and Youngstown State and the like is just asking for a heart attack at age 36. But a few changes ensued from this week, mostly in the form of punishment:

- I dinged Oklahoma for a lackluster effort against Utah State.

- Boise State gets a boost for practically the only worthwhile win of the week, though I very strongly considered a permanent banishment from my top 25 for both those teams for those uniforms.

- UNC's ranking last week was sort of dependent on them having a lineup. They still managed to look OK, but UNC's second stringers aren't, in the long run, rankable.

- Pitt gets dumped for looking really, really sloppy and Utah gets not put in the lineup either, for looking almost as sloppy. If that'd been a good 27-24 game I'd have kept Pitt and added Utah - as it is, once again the big Thursday night season opener is a knife to the eyes, and as with last year, both perpetrators are suitably punished.