I'm kind of flying blind this morning since technical difficulties have left me without my stat rankings. I should be able to have them before the final ballot is due, but this is an extra draft-y draft right now. Let me hear it in the comments, because I feel like I've made a couple of obvious errors. Not as obvious as leaving Oregon out of my first draft last week (oops), but still, I need some double checking.
Top 25 here, comments after the jump.
- Alabama
- Florida
- Texas
- TCU
- Cincinnati
- Georgia Tech
- Boise State
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Pittsburgh
- Iowa
- Oklahoma State
- Penn State
- Clemson
- Virginia Tech
- Nebraska
- Miami (FL)
- Oregon State
- USC
- California
- Ole Miss
- LSU
- Stanford
- Houston
- BYU
- No moves at the top: Nothing I saw over the weekend changes the order thanks to cupcakes and bye weeks.
- Ohio State over Pitt: Buckeyes have two nice wins (Iowa, Penn State), whereas Pitt hasn't beaten anyone who is currently ranked by anyone. Purdue was a bad loss, but it's better than Pitt's loss to NC State. OSU's USC loss doesn't look as good anymore, but the big wins overcome it.
- Four ACC schools over the Pac-10 No. 2, Oregon State: The Pac-10 is looking like perhaps the best conference top to bottom, but it's not as heavy at the top as some others. Oregon State's best win is over Cal, whose best win was over Stanford (who lost to Wake Forest, let's not forget). It doesn't help that USC, owner of two terrible losses, beat Oregon State and Cal, creating a confusing mess. Now that UNC has its act together, none of the ACC schools have indefensible losses except Clemson, but the Tigers are playing some of the best football of anyone right now. Miami beat GT, VT has beaten Nebraska, and Clemson took down Miami. I could be persuaded to move this order around, but it will take some persuading.
- Stanford at 23: I'm glad now that I didn't shoot Stanford up that highly last week since they caught Oregon in a let down game after beating USC (teams are now 4-12 the week after beating the Trojans since 2002 or so), and in whooping USC they only continued what Oregon started. Now, it could be that Stanford did just lose a let down game after beating the Trojans as Oregon did to them, but the Rose Bowl was on the line and they still blew it to a team without its star running back and whose next best win is Arizona. The Cardinal is the only four-loss team in my ballot, so there's that, but I can't put them any higher. Not when they've already lost to Cal and Oregon State and still have that loss to bowl-ineligible Wake Forest on their resume.