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One Reason to Like the BlogPoll

By straightbangin

I am not from Los Angeles, have never spent time in Los Angeles, and know very little about Los Angeles save for the basics: the air is shitty, the traffic is shitty, and you can run into a celebrity at any moment. Thus, I don't know if Scott Wolf, a USC beat writer, or his newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily News, are worthy of respect. Given the considerable gap in national prestige between the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News, I'd imagine that the latter is sort of like the New York Post, a newspaper that can't contend in the rarefied air of elite journalism and instead opts for lowbrow mass appeal and a good sports section. And given this alarming AP Top 25 ballot from Wolf, it appears as though he isn't exactly a sports-writing legend in the making.

Look at this thing:

  1. West Virginia
  2. Ohio State
  3. Auburn
  4. LSU
  5. Florida State
  6. Michigan
  7. Florida
  8. USC
  9. Notre Dame
  10. Miami
  11. Iowa
  12. Georgia
  13. Virginia Tech
  14. Oklahoma
  15. Tennessee
  16. Nebraska
  17. Texas
  18. Oregon
  19. Louisville
  20. Texas A&M
  21. Boston College
  22. TCU
  23. Penn State
  24. UCLA
  25. Alabama
Let us consider all that seems wrong with these choices:

  • While I have no qualms with West Virginia being ranked in or around the top 5, I don't understand how any voter can place it above Ohio State, which has beaten a top-10 team on the road.
  • He has no-offense-playing FSU at #5, and we-lost-at-home-to-them Miami at #10.
  • He has a Michigan team that probably lacks balance and has a number of issues that are fairly apparent to even casual observers ranked ahead of Notre Dame, which has a more impressive resume; and teams like USC and Tennessee, each of which already has a much better win than a home defeat of Vandy or Central Michigan
  • He has dropped Texas, which moved the ball on but lost to the leading national championship contender, behind a team like Iowa, which, Tate or no Tate, just struggled to get by Syracuse, arguably the worst BCS-conference team in the country.

Now of course, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, and some of the supposed errors I've cited above are issues of judgment for which there is no obvious correct answer. However, I think one can make a fairly convincing argument in favor of each criticism, and I don't think that the countervailing cases in support of Wolf's choices are as strong.

But yet, this man and his faulty or just absent logic directly influence who will win the national championship.

Brian is a golden god.