First things first -- the combined draft BlogPoll ballot, which you may now tear to shreds for a day.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | |
| 2 | Texas | |
| 3 | Alabama |
 2 |
| 4 | Southern Cal | |
| 5 | Brigham Young |
9 |
| 6 | Penn State | |
| 7 | Mississippi |
1 |
| 8 | Ohio State |
1 |
| 9 | Oklahoma State |
3 |
| 10 | Boise State |
5 |
| 11 | California | |
| 12 | LSU |
 2 |
| 13 | Georgia Tech | |
| 14 | North Carolina |
2 |
| 15 | Nebraska |
6 |
| 16 | Oklahoma |
13 |
| 17 | Virginia Tech |
10 |
| 18 | Cincinnati | |
| 19 | Miami (Florida) | |
| 20 | TCU | |
| 21 | Pittsburgh |
2 |
| 22 | Texas Tech |
3 |
| 23 | Iowa |
5 |
| 24 | Notre Dame | |
| 25 | Utah | |
| Last week's ballot | ||
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Year2's ballot here. Mine is below the jump.
Any extreme weirdness in the ballot should probably be attributed to me, as will be explained after the jump. Oh, and I broke a few ties as the senior BlogPoll balloter. If I hear any hue and cry from Year2 or the general public (aside from 'Wah! You don't like my team!') about how I broke the following ties -- Alabama/Southern Cal, BYU/Penn State, Oklahoma State/Boise State, Miami/TCU, Texas Tech/Iowa, Notre Dame/Utah -- that's what the final ballot cast Wednesday morning is for. So any analytical comments are, as always, welcome. Note: In the future, this should all be up by Sunday evening/Monday morning, giving you more time to comment. The odd schedule compresses things this week.
In the first in-season BlogPoll ballot of the year, I always have two rules: First, no team that won will move down, no matter how unimpressive the win. Many teams are working out problems they had during the offseason, and college football is one of the only major sports that has no "preseason."
Second, I do drop any team that looses. Period. That's a nod to the resume part of the poll, which isn't supposed to take over fully until later in the year, but should have something to do with the final outcome.
Finally, I build two sets of rankings for the first few weeks. One is a pure resume poll, based on who won against whom. The second is a more power-based set of rankings, taking into account who won against whom but also giving weight to the preseason poll. Because we have so little data, the power ranking is counted twice. And so we get this:
1 Florida
2 Texas
3 Southern Cal
4 Alabama
5 BYU
Florida, Texas and Southern Cal all get to stay thanks to winning. Alabama and BYU have the biggest victories of the year.
6 Penn State
7 Oklahoma State
8 Ole Miss
9 Cal
10 Boise State
I wasn't blown away by what Penn State or Ole Miss did. I was slightly impressed by Oklahoma State's win against Georgia, though I think we can read too much into it until we know more about Georgia. Cal waxed Maryland, which might not be very good but is still in a nominally BCS-level league. Boise State had a good game against Oregon, though their inability to put away the Ducks could come back to haunt them. (And I never thought that highly of Oregon to begin with.)
11 LSU
12 Ohio State
13 North Carolina
14 Georgia Tech
15 Miami
LSU moves up here mostly because others around them fall or stay in place. I'm not overly impressed by what Ohio State did against Navy, for example, so they stay at No. 12. I really liked Miami's win against Florida State, which came in one of the best games of the opening weekend.
16 Nebraska
17 Pittsburgh
18 Cincinnati
19 Iowa
20 Notre Dame
I really thought about breaking the "don't drop" rule for Iowa, but didn't. Notre Dame moves up a little bit after shellacking Nevada. Cincinnati might win the Big East -- who knows?
21 Auburn
22 Oregon State
23 Missouri
24 Michigan
25 Baylor
All of these except Oregon State are bizarre and can be blamed almost entirely on the resume rankings. Auburn defeated one of the best mid-majors out there by a sizable margin. (There, Tiger fans, you happy?) Missouri and Baylor get credit for simply winning a game against BCS-league competition. Michigan?!?