21
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
Jeez. It’s Monday? The weekends seem to be getting shorter. Anyway, I threw together an initial blogpoll ballot. There was a good bit of movement by various teams, but it was also a busy football weekend.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas |  1 |
| 2 | Alabama |  1 |
| 3 | Penn State | – |
| 4 | Florida | – |
| 5 | Southern Cal | – |
| 6 | Oklahoma | 1 |
| 7 | Ohio State | 3 |
| 8 | Oklahoma State | 2 |
| 9 | Texas Tech | 1 |
| 10 | Georgia | 2 |
| 11 | Utah | 4 |
| 12 | Boise State | 6 |
| 13 | LSU | – |
| 14 | Pittsburgh | 9 |
| 15 | TCU | 11 |
| 16 | South Florida | 5 |
| 17 | Kansas | 1 |
| 18 | Brigham Young | 9 |
| 19 | Tulsa | 6 |
| 20 | Missouri | 6 |
| 21 | Ball State | 1 |
| 22 | Georgia Tech | 4 |
| 23 | Boston College | 3 |
| 24 | Florida State | 2 |
| 25 | Northwestern | 1 |
Dropped Out: Virginia Tech (#11), North Carolina (#17), Wake Forest (#19), Vanderbilt (#20), Michigan State (#24).
For the most part, I just sort of threw together the bottom half of this. I didn’t really take the time to figure out if I thought Kansas was really better than BYU, so if you have any arguments on about 15-25, I’m pretty likely to take your word for it and submit it in the actual ballot.
I did try to put some thought in the top 10 at least (11-14 is a little gray), and I’ve finally moved Texas into the top spot after a few weeks of hesitation. Alabama wasn’t convincing in their close win against MIssissippi, and the Longhorns completely manhandled Missouri, so it became obvious that this week, Texas deserves the top spot. I’m also close to putting Penn State in 2nd, and if you can convince me, I’ll probably do it.
Florida holds the spot over USC, but both teams make a strong case for best 1 loss team in the country along with Oklahoma. I’m really doubting that Oklahoma State is really as strong as the polls would lead us to believe, but we’ll find out next week as they face off against Texas.
Georgia moves up 2 spots after defeating Vandy and continuing their streak of winning fairly ugly. Boise State is continuing to climb the polls, but not really due to anything they’ve done, but rather because higher teams keep losing. I’m pretty sure they’re not deserving of a 12 ranking, and I can’t wait to get some reason to drop them.
Interestingly enough, it’s late enough in the season that some two loss teams start to qualify for inclusion in the top 25. Missouri hangs on despite having lost twice, because deep down, I don’t think they’re that bad a team.
Thoughts? I’ll submit the final ballot Wednesday around 10AM EST, so complain or praise until then.
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I have a question, I heard it on ESPN or something but your poll has the same situation. USC lost to OSU (Oregan State) a pretty not good team. UGA lost to BAMA A pretty good team. Both One lose teams. So how is it USC is 5 spots higher than UGA? Given USC would probably beat UGA. But wasn’t this poll about resumes and what not? I am not asking for a chnage I just want the opinon of a (well-respected?) poll voter.
[...] Sport news by unknown [...]
For us at this point, we’ve sort of combined the resume aspect of the voting as well as the general feel of the teams. By “feel,” I mean that we are also considering which team might win should they face head to head as well as a function of how well they looked the previous week.
Most of the criticism of computer polls comes out because computers don’t take into account margin of victory (by design), and momentum, instead only taking objective (sort of) views of the season as a whole.
By being a human poll, we’re looking more at the “feel” of the team at that given point as well as resume and momentum.
Thanks for the good question.
Going along with what Jon said, you have to take into account that despite USC’s loss, they’ve pretty much destroyed every other opponent they’ve had. UGA on the other hand likes to keep it close. UGA’s been decimated by injuries and probably has hurt their efficiency. I’d root for UGA if they faced USC, but honestly, the odds would be against them, hence their lower ranking.
You in truth are a very wise person!