Sunday, October 04, 2009

This Week's BlogPoll Top 25 Ballot: Bye-Bye

Here is my best guess at this week's (mostly) resume-based Top 25 ballot for the BlogPoll.

RankTeamDelta
1 Florida 1
2 Texas 1
3 Alabama 2
4 Cincinnati
5 TCU 2
6 LSU
7 Boise State 4
8 Virginia Tech
9 Oregon 3
10 Southern Cal 3
11 Iowa 1
12 Kansas 3
13 Miami (Florida) 9
14 Ohio State
15 Houston 10
16 Auburn 3
17 South Florida
18 Georgia Tech 3
19 Oklahoma State 1
20 Penn State 5
21 Brigham Young 6
22 Mississippi
23 Stanford
24 Missouri
25 Wisconsin
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Oklahoma (#16), Michigan (#20), Georgia (#23).


*Oklahoma, Michigan and Georgia are out. Stanford is in.

*Couple of odd adjustments: I actually moved LSU down after a road win at Georgia.

*I moved Alabama down from No. 1, behind idle Florida and Texas -- now, I had been putting Bama at No. 1 as early as anyone (after Week 1). I based the drop on what I thought was a pretty interesting head-to-head comparison: I thought Florida looked better beating Kentucky in Lexington than Alabama did. (Moving idle Texas ahead of Alabama, too? Well, maybe that needs to be rethought -- Texas will not benefit from Oklahoma losing yesterday; it'll make a UT win in 2 weeks a little less impressive.)

*I'm still high on Cincinnati and TCU.

*Miami vaults back up, although I recognize that you can't value a win over Oklahoma for Miami and not give BYU more credit for beating Oklahoma, because they did it in Norman.

*I use a lot of direct and indirect transitive properties -- teams beating other teams head-to-head, and how teams did against common opponents.

*(Houston just screwed up everyone's resume-balloting: They have this incredible "plus" -- beating Oklahoma State in Stillwater -- and this insanely bad "minus" -- getting throttled by lowly UTEP. It'll be interesting to see how people reconcile it.)

Would love to get your feedback.

8 comments:

Michael W said...

Personally, I'm not big on the idea of comparing how good two teams are by putting their games against a common opponent side-by-side. Example: 4-1 USC lost to Washington. 4-1 Notre Dame beat Washington. Based on this common team, why don't you have Notre Dame above USC? Because there's no way ND is better than USC, that's why. Common opponents doesn't replace common sense.

It's so odd seeing Stanford ranked. They've had a great season so far, but they haven't played anybody yet.

Last comment: I'd hate to see Penn State back in the polls, but I know the AP and Coaches are going to put them back, too. Yeah yeah, Penn State is a big name school, but come on. Their offense has been bad all season, and they finally put up some points on *Illinois* and they are back on track? It'll take more than a win over a patsy to show that they've got more than just name recognition going for them.

rc said...

Dan- BYU's win over Oklahoma was not in Norman it was in Dallas at the new Cowboy Stadium. Do you watch these games? Or only Florida?

Qwagmire said...

BYU didnt beat Oklahoma in Norman, they played in Texas at Arlington (I think the new Cowboys stadium). While this is still a "home" game for OK, its not Norman!

Ted Hill said...

Yeah, only BYU did NOT defeat Oklahoma in Norman, it was in Dallas.

IrishNati said...

BYU beat Oklahoma in Dallas. Still pretty much a home game for the Sooners.

Unknown said...

BYU beat OU on a neutral field in Dallas in the Jerry Dome.

Ell said...

I agree with what Randvek says at the top of the comment thread about common opponents. It's tricky. The situation was very different - Alabama came out throwing on a day where that was going to be nigh impossible (I was there).

Aside from that, the Bama defense looks even more impressive in light of what Arkansas did Saturday in College Station, Texas.

Oh, and BYU & Oklahoma played on a "neutral" field. In case you'd missed that...

The Mark Show said...

You rip Boise State because of the schedule but you put TCU ahead of them even though TCU hasn't played a ranked team yet. Just another reason you're a hack.