Week 1 BlogPoll
(Written by kencraw)
Here’s my week #1 poll (see here for background):
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Southern Cal | — |
| 2 | Florida | — |
| 3 | Oklahoma | — |
| 4 | Georgia | — |
| 5 | LSU | — |
| 6 | Missouri |  3 |
| 7 | West Virginia | — |
| 8 | Alabama | 18 |
| 9 | Ohio State |  1 |
| 10 | Oregon | — |
| 11 | Texas | — |
| 12 | Auburn | 3 |
| 13 | Texas Tech | 1 |
| 14 | Kansas | 8 |
| 15 | Wisconsin | 2 |
| 16 | Arizona State | 3 |
| 17 | Brigham Young | 2 |
| 18 | Penn State | 2 |
| 19 | Illinois | 1 |
| 20 | Virginia Tech | 14 |
| 21 | Fresno State | 5 |
| 22 | Utah | 4 |
| 23 | California | 3 |
| 24 | UCLA | 2 |
| 25 | Notre Dame | — |
Thoughts?
The one thing I give a big bump for is playing good teams early. I’m not impressed by beating up on Southeastern Rhode Island State (not to be confused with Southeastern Rhode Island University). But if a team plays a significant team from another BCS conference and win, that’s going to mean much more to me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I rank those teams higher than I think their talent deserves, but as far as proving themselves, they’ve done more than the other teams to prove themselves, so they get the benefit of the doubt. Included in this are UCLA, Alabama, Fresno State, Missouri and although they were already at the top, USC.
Other things of note:
- I’m pretty unimpressed with Arizona State, only putting 30 points on Northern Arizona.
- Illinois doesn’t lose much respect from me for losing to a higher ranked team.
- Yes, Notre Dame stays at 25 even though they didn’t play. In some sense not playing is no worse than playing SE-RI-State
- I feel uncomfortable with my Virginia Tech ranking, but I still think they’re best in the ACC and had an off day.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
I totally agree, almost everybody wants to schedule cupcakes in their non conference games. The SEC and Big 10 play four non conference games. Nine of the 12 SEC teams scheduled the old 1AA teams as one of their games. Only two PAC10 teams did that. It’s hard to kick teams off the top 25 if they beat the cupcakes, and it’s hard for teams like CAL who schedule good teams to get on it. A majority of the writers who vote are on the East Coast and other than USC don’t pay much attention to the PAC10 unless we beat a BCS school that’s East of the Mississippi River.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I think the important thing to note is I’m beating 7 people in the pick-em league, and only 4 of them forgot to make their picks!
I fully expect a posting about how I’m beating 3 people who are actually participating any day now Ken…