blogpoll ballot, week 11

Apologies for lateness.  Usually I've been more than able to take care of this on Sunday, but then, usually on Sunday I don't get to write about what UVA might do in the postseason, nor do I get to watch the hoops team eat some cupcakey goodness.  So other things got in the way, and you get the ballot today.  There might not be much time for me to see any complaints and corrections, but then, I think this is one of my better efforts and might not need much.

From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 12

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	--
2	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	2
3	Alabama Crimson Tide	-1
4	Oklahoma Sooners	-1
5	Oregon Ducks	3
6	Boise St. Broncos	-1
7	Michigan Wolverines	3
8	Nebraska Cornhuskers	1
9	TCU Horned Frogs	8
10	Clemson Tigers	-4
11	Stanford Cardinal	-4
12	Wisconsin Badgers	1
13	South Carolina Gamecocks	2
14	USC Trojans	7
15	Virginia Tech Hokies	5
16	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	6
17	Penn St. Nittany Lions	-3
18	Michigan St. Spartans	7
19	Georgia Bulldogs	-3
20	Houston Cougars	-2
21	Arkansas Razorbacks	-10
22	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	-3
23	Kansas St. Wildcats	--
24	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	--
25	Florida St. Seminoles	--
Dropouts: Texas Longhorns

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

I'm very pleased about how the top 6 turned out.  Then we get into the Midwestern mess, where MSU beat Michigan and Wisconsin but lost to Notre Dame and Nebraska, the latter of which lost to Wisconsin and the former of which lost to Michigan.  There are triangles of ranking doom all around, and I've no doubt at all that Michigan will beat Nebraska just to make another one.  In the end it has basically come down to the teams that are higher being floated there by their other opponents.  Nebraska and Michigan have six-win delights in Washington, Wyoming, San Diego State, and Eastern Michigan**; MSU has the biggest I-A anchor of all in Florida Atlantic and kind of a sluggish, lousy game against Youngstown State.

**I don't particularly care, by the way, how a team got to its win total; at least not the down and dirty specifics like "EMU has two wins against I-AA opponents," which they do.  Of course, a Pac-12 6-win team is better than a MWC 6-win team is better than a MAC 6-win team, but that's about where I leave it, for simplicity's sake.

Anyway, you'll notice the only dropout is Texas, which is by one system point to Florida State.  If Texas didn't have an extra bye, they'd probably be there instead.**  And those 26 teams are the only ones that should be considered for a top 25 at this point.  People voting for Baylor, you're a little crazy.  People voting for Virginia, I luv ya, but you're even crazier.  People voting for Arizona State, you're certifiable.

**You'll remember that my system tends to frown upon byes.  I think it's very justifiable to do so.  Especially now; everyone has at least one, but a team that has two - well, should you not be penalized for 1) being 6-3 instead of 7-3 and 2) having that extra extra preparation week?

So, why those 26 teams?  Again, as I did last week, I did a pre-ranking of teams that come in underneath the top 25.  Those teams were, in order from top to bottom:

Florida State
West Virginia
Baylor
Tulsa
Rutgers
Cincinnati
Virginia
Brigham Young
Arkansas State
San Diego State
Wyoming

I dropped 6-4 teams from the whole thing, by the way, so no Washington, ASU, UNC, OSU, etc.  They'd never be able to hack it up against the 9-1 types.  Anyway, I added the top two to consideration for the actual ranking, and FSU barely snuck in there and there was a big gap between #26 Texas and #27 West Virginia.  A big gap.  So I can see there being some room for shuffling in the top 25, but I basically will argue with you if you try to suggest I should replace one team with another.  Rarely is there such an obvious gap between the nation's top 25 teams and the rest, but we were approaching that last week and we are definitely seeing it this week.