Posted by NoleCC

(Note: I had to redact some of this until next week… I’ll explain later)

Nice. I guess I have to really defend my poll each week now. It should be easy enough. And, as always, I ask for your help revising my ballot before the final submission, 10am Wednesday.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	7
2	Missouri	1
3	Oklahoma	1
4	Texas	3
5	LSU	1
6	Penn State	5
7	Texas Tech	3
8	Brigham Young	5
9	South Florida	5
10	Georgia	5
11	Vanderbilt	11
12	Florida	10
13	Utah	2
14	Connecticut	2
15	Boise State	2
16	Southern Cal	15
17	Auburn	1
18	Oklahoma State	2
19	Wisconsin	10
20	Georgia Tech	4
21	Kansas	5
22	Ohio State	4
23	Maryland	3
24	Oregon	2
25	Ball State	–

All hell broke loose over the weekend. I think the ballots are going to be all over the board, frankly. But I’ll do my best to defend my ballot, if you hate it, tell me. If you need to tweak it, tell me. All suggestions should be defended in the comments, but I can be persuaded pretty easily if there is some sort of reason behind why I should change my vote.

On to the defense.

Alabama #1 – They beat the crap out of one of the “SEC’s best.” I watched about a quarter of the game total, because it was such a boring beat down of the Dawgs. If Alabama stays healthy, and they may not because they are only two deep at this point, they will play for the SEC Title and the MNC.

Missou and Oklahoma each move up a spot. The big mover is #4 Texas, who won with style. At this point, it’s still early and style counts when there is a sea of undefeateds. I like Texas orange better than LSU purple and yellow, so they hop the Tigahhhs.

Penn State has a great offense. If they keep up the scoring they’ll go far in a Big 10 that has a crappy Michigan team, a Wisconsin team that lost to Michigan and an Ohio State team that I can’t figure out since Southern Cal choked.

Texas Tech, BYU, South Florida, probably all overrated in my poll at the end of the season, but for now they deserve to be above the others and in the Top 10. If they keep winning, they keep their A’s with me. When they lose they’ll tank.

What to do with 10-25? I’m guessing, but Georgia is probably better than Vandy and Florida (suspect secondary, which Gator Hippy has been yelling at me for, for quite a while). Vandy might be good, I have no idea really, but they can have some glory too until they lose. I kept UF over Utah, Conn and the rest because a 1 point loss to Ole Miss is bad, but they’d still beat up on the teams below them. Most of them anyway.

Utah, UConn and Boise all move up a bit, thanks to the losses. I hope Boise St. gets to BCS bust again this season. Southern Cal (or whatever team showed up on Thursday Mark Sanchez) drops to 16 from #1 in my poll. That’s what you get for losing to Oregon State, and having your butt handed to you in the process. The Trojans seem to do this a lot lately, what’s up with that Pete Carroll?

The rest, well take your cracks at it, because that’s what I do. There’s some ACC bias in there, but that never hurt anybody. Wisconsin losing to Michigan is awful, fwiw. AWFUL.