Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Blogpoll: Week 2

RankTeamDelta
1 Southern Cal (1-0) --
2 Georgia (2-0) --
3 Oklahoma (2-0) --
4 Florida (2-0) 3
5 Auburn (2-0) 1
6 LSU (1-0) 1
7 Missouri (2-0) 3
8 Alabama (2-0) 4
9 Texas Tech (2-0) 2
10 Texas (2-0) 4
11 Kansas (2-0) 2
12 Wake Forest (2-0) 3
13 Ohio State (2-0) 7
14 Arizona State (2-0) 3
15 Oregon (2-0) 3
16 California (2-0) 3
17 Penn State (2-0) 3
18 East Carolina (2-0) 8
19 Utah (2-0) 2
20 Fresno State (1-0) 2
21 Wisconsin (2-0) 3
22 Florida State (1-0) 3
23 Virginia Tech (1-1) 3
24 South Florida (2-0) 2
25 Clemson (1-1) 2

Dropped Out: West Virginia (1-1) (#8), Boston College (1-1) (#15), Brigham Young (2-0) (#16).

New To The Poll: East Carolina (2-0) (#18), Virginia Tech (1-1) (#23), South Florida (2-0) (#24)

Others Receiving a Top 25 Vote: Georgia Tech, Kentucky, UCLA, Illinois

Highest Standard Deviation Between Individual Ballots: Ohio State (4.24), Wake Forest (3.54), Penn State (3.54)

Lowest Standard Deviation Between Individual Ballots: Southern Cal (0.00), Georgia (0.00), Oklahoma (0.00), Auburn (0.00), Oregon (0.00)

By Conference: SEC 5, Big XII 5, Pac 10 4, ACC 4, Big Ten 3, Big East 1, Mountain West 1, Conference USA 1, WAC 1


Games Jeff Watched:
Georgia Tech @ Boston College

... and half or less of the following:
South Carolina @ Vanderbilt
Brigham Young @ Washington
San Diego State @ Notre Dame
Oregon State @ Penn State
Mississippi @ Wake Forest
South Florida @ Central Florida
Miami @ Florida
Southern Miss @ Auburn
Texas @ UTEP
West Virginia @ East Carolina

Games Brian Watched:
South Carolina @ Vanderbilt
Georgia Tech @ Boston College (in-person)

Tried to fight off depression and watched dribs and drabs of the following:
San Diego State @ Notre Dame
South Florida @ Central Florida
Miami @ Florida


Notes

6 Layer BCS Dip. The conferences are beginning to separate themselves more and more. We don't plan it this way, it just happens. Our top 10 teams are basically Southern Cal and the rest of the Southeastern Conference and the Big XII. The second tier of teams includes teams from the Big Ten and the Pac 10. Sprinkle in a few mid majors and the ACC round out the Top 25. The Big East continues to be the BCS punchline of all college football jokes with West Virginia's upset loss to East Carolina 22-3, Akron doubling down on Syracuse on the road, and Connecticut barely escaping Philadelphia with a 12-9 win over Temple in overtime. South Florida is the lone Big East representative at #24.

Coulter/Krugman. Are we truly cursed, or did our quarterback et. al. just stink up the joint last Saturday?

The Suck that is the ACC. We bumped Wake Forest down a few spots to #12 after their scare against Ole Miss (see below). Florida State comes in at #22 after an impressive performance against Western Carolina. We begrudgingly put Virginia Tech at #23 and Clemson at #25, both coming off lackluster performances against I-AA fodder.

Arrrgh! We owe the East Carolina Pirates and coach Skip Holtz an apology. You should have been ranked last week. This week we move you up to #18.

Buckeyes and Deacons. We weren't very impressed with Wake Forest surviving Mississippi on a last-second Sam Swank field goal (but we are glad they pulled it out to bolster the conference's resume), nor were we impressed with the Buckeye malaise as they struggled to get past Ohio U.

Do your worst.

6 comments:

X said...

No love for BYU? They won. They're 2-0.

As for the non-Wake ACC teams in the poll:

Florida State: 1-0, now #22 after beating Western Carolina
Virginia Tech: 1-1, now #23 after beating Furman
Clemson: 1-1, now #25 after beating The Citadel

No doubt that's fine BCS competition, a veritable murderer's row.

I understand wanting to get more respect for the ACC, but stacking the poll seems like kind of a wild way to do it-- not to mention that you say you begrudgingly slipped VT and Clemson in.

Brian said...

Should Virginia Tech and Clemson be out of our top 25? not sure.

Sure, they beat up on I-AA competition last week, but at least they challenged themselves with games against 'Bama and East Carolina (who apparently is awesome now). That's more than we can say for other teams in our ballot (e.g. Ohio State, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas Tech, Texas, Auburn, LSU) who haven't even sniffed BCS or "near BCS" (read: ECU Pirates) competition in the first two weeks.

I wouldn't necessarily call it stacking the poll with ACC teams giving them the 22, 24 and 25 slots. Who would you add in taking out those three teams?

Jeff said...

Other teams lost so Clemson moved back in. Our Clemson ranking is consistent with the national polls.

VT's fluke loss to ECU at a neutral site looks a lot better now that ECU killed WVU Saturday.

FSU looked really good with their depleted roster so they were as impressive as they could've been given the opponent.

Is there a little ACC bias? But our VT ranking is the only on significantly different from the AP poll.

As for BYU getting snubbed you can blame me. Brian had them in the top 20 but they didn't even make my top 30 because they should've gone to OT and possibly lost to Washington on Saturday.

The bottom line is that there have only been 2 weeks of college football played so far so this is still a work in progress. Some ACC questions will be answered when GT plays VT Saturday but you can bet the winner of that game will be in our top 25.

Brian said...

Yeah, I did vote for BYU but Jeff left them out. We vote individually and then average out the two ballots. If one of the two of us don't vote for a team, they usually don't make our weekly ballot.

When I think about it more and more though, remember the last mid-major, aspiring BCS crasher to barely get past UW? Hawaii. We all know what happened to them last year in the Sugar Bowl ...

X said...

Well, by stacking I mean loading the bottom-end of the poll to be able to say, "Hey, the ACC has four teams ranked, compared to just one Big East team and three Big Ten schools."

At this point in time, I would have included BYU, UCLA, and Oklahoma State, with GT, VT, Boise, and Iowa knocking. I probably wouldn't rank FSU until they went through Colorado and Wake, and maybe even Miami. Clemson would have to wait until Wake/GT for me, and I agree that VT's loss to ECU looks better now, and they would probably be the first in among the three (VT, Clemson, FSU) in question.

I also agree that this early in the season, rankings have more to do with potential instead of a true, current strength. If I had my way, schools wouldn't be ranked until October.

Brian said...

Remember, the stacking doesn't end up being intentional, as Jeff and I vote independently without looking at each others ballots.

One thing we can agree on is that polls shouldn't come out until October. The sample size of games is way too small and you end up voting on these teams based on potential/brand name rather than based on resume.