Blogpoll Week 5 Final

by Beauford on Oct 7, 2009 8:02 AM CDT in College Football

Rank	Team	Delta

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

Dropped Out: Oklahoma (#9), Houston (#13), California (#15), Georgia (#16), Michigan (#18), Georgia Tech (#24).

I'm still not happy with the top 5. Per the comments section, I've removed Cincinnati from my top 5 given the level of competition they've faced, but in order to do that I had to bump Ohio State up, then got to thinking that USC's win over Cal was actually pretty dominating and they did beat Ohio State head to head and all, so I bumped them up too. Oh hey, USC is back in the top-5. Crap.

LSU is still placed in what Orson perfectly calls "double or nothing" land. If they win against Florida, they'll be in the top-3. Lose, and they probably drop to the 17-18 range. In other words, I wouldn't freak out over LSU dropping 2 spots in this edition despite the win.

I went ahead and bumped Penn State to 12, but I still don't know if they're a top-10 team. They've played one solid team, and lost to that team. Frankly, we don't know a ton about either Penn State OR Iowa right now. This weekend's Michigan vs. Iowa game should clear it up a bit as UM isn't quite ranked, but they're not totally crap either.

As noted in the comments, I went ahead and moved in the remaining unbeatens into the poll, and to do that I had to drop Oklahoma. From the comments:

"On the one hand, I’m with you in wanting to reward teams for playing tough opponents. On the other hand, Oklahoma is the only ranked team with 2 losses. If they really are top notch material, they will earn their way back."

I agree. They're ranked #26 right now, and have plenty of opportunities to play themselves back into the top-15 range once we get to the meat of the Big-12 schedule.

Notre Dame is just barely clinging on here. Also - South Carolina took Cal's spot.

Comments and concerns are always welcome, as always, we'll try to do better next week.

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Nice job

Southern Cal plays Notre Dame next (neither team plays this week) — if they dismantle the Irish in South Bend, then the loss to Washington gets the asterisk* it probably deserves and they’ve really earned the 5 position, IMHO. If they lose or it’s a close game, then they drop like a stone, true freshman quarterback and all.

Coach with intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of most of his opponent’s players. Also, Washington’s three losses are looking good this week: LSU 5-0; Stanford 4-1, 3-0 in Pac 10; ND 4-1.

by Rasmus on Oct 7, 2009 9:16 AM CDT reply actions