Blogpoll Wednesdays are always chaotic, and usually involve submitting Blogpoll ballots in a hurried and incomprehensible fashion. And today is no different.

Comments and apologies follow–and there’s plenty to be made. BTW, pay no attention to the arrows and deltas. Not sure what’s going on with them, but we can confirm that we did not have Ohio State below Boise last week.

Rank Team Delta
1 Ohio State 25
2 Michigan 24
3 Southern Cal 23
4 Florida 22
5 Arkansas 21
6 Rutgers 20
7 Notre Dame 19
8 Wisconsin 18
9 Wake Forest 17
10 West Virginia 16
11 LSU 15
12 Georgia Tech 14
13 Louisville 13
14 Texas 12
15 California 11
16 Oklahoma 10
17 Auburn 9
18 Tennessee 8
19 Maryland 7
20 Nebraska 6
21 Boise State 5
22 Virginia Tech 4
23 Boston College 3
24 Oregon 2
25 Brigham Young 1

Dropped Out:

Apocalypse at 1,2. This Saturday. Bring your blue cobalt glass blast goggles. After that, the deluge, since the rankings will get very exotic, indeed.


Saturday in Columbus. You have become death, destroyer of worlds, Jim Tressel…

USC at 3. It would be great to go ahead and make a bold statement by putting USC lower (SEC fans all together:“Oregon fucking State?”) Yes, but since they’re the only team whose schedule compares to Florida and they’re still covered in the glitter of OMG USC BEST EVR 2005, everyone’s going to have them up there anyway. They get three games to validate the carryover, and will lose one of them. We’re making a Clinton thumnb on top of fist gesture as we say this, which polls as very trustworthy yet authoritative. But if you disagree, well, wait a week, and in the meantime let Pete answer your criticisms for us.

Florida at 4. Looking like Ohio State 2001, but without the geneticist at quarterback. They just don’t lose, even if their d-line seems committed to smoking their way off the team one member at a time. USC didn’t get dropped for squeaky losses early, and neither will Florida. Again, see Pete’s response above for our rebuttal, and blame the rest on the fact that we’d take a bullet for Reggie Nelson at this point.

Arkansas. We’ll rank them above Florida once they beat LSU by putting Darren McFadden at punter and running upback fakes for touchdowns on three consecutive drives. Since Gus Malzahn seems to be stealing our whole NCAA 2007 cheapie playbook and implementing a new wrinkle each week, this would be the only possible new gambit left in the bag.

Rutgers. Yeah, Rutgers. If you’re going to pimp every other Big East team smashing teams with half a pulse, you must credit Rutgers, too. The only reason not to rank them this high is “they’re Rutgers,” which is crap crap crap. The offense is rush-heavy sludger, but the defense is a perfect facsimile of Schiano’s Miami Hurricane defenses, flying to the ball, punishing anyone who gets within ten paces of it, and putting savage pressure on quarterbacks to get to the checkdown five seconds ago.

Notre Dame. Default, quality wins…in polls, sometimes progress is defined by other people’s regress. They may be winding their way through the flag football team of the United States Treasury Department next, but Notre Dame is not losing and plays a one-game season to get a slot in a primo BCS bowl. Their only loss came to the de facto co-number one, and they play USC for a final exam. We’ll break out “Yakety Sax” for thatgame if necessary, but not until then.

Our W fetish erupts. Wisconsin and Wake both bump, since they’re brawny, brainy teams capable of beating hides off anyone in the poll on a given night. Wake especially gets zero credit for a mindbendingly simple offense managed by yet another coach with an obviously fake name, the soon-to-be coveted Steed Lobotzke.

Cal down. We’re polling angry here. Cal continues to wax fat on the prestige of a single win against Cal in 2002, and we continue to buy it. They’re the Gators of the early 90s: flashy, coached brilliantly, and yet one or two game-long brainfarts away from dominance.

Hot Boudin, Cold Cous-cous; we lost twice with no excuse. LSU must be blowing up possums with hand grenades in the bayous out of frustration, since the word “ill-starred” only covers half of the bizarro of their season. Their qb fumbles on the one in the Florida game as they’re about to take over the game; they seize against Auburn in a 7-3 game they could have easily won.


LSU: coulda shoulda.

Boise State, go away. They’ll get a BCS spot if all holds. Life’s not fair, so we take our petty revenge by putting them much lower than conventional pollsters because they could not stay on the field with almost anyone on this poll. If they do draw a Texas in the Fiesta, vultures should begin circling in the early second quarter.

Leave your outrages, scandalous critiques, and fan hateporn below. Like any pollster, we deserve it all.