You lose points for lutefisk.

Polling is becoming like composing the UN’s HDI rankings: at the top, you’ve got indisputably happy football people quibbling over the tiniest and most subjective of details.

Norway: We have universal health care and the highest standards of living in the world.

Denmark: We have the same, and we have butter cookies.

Norway: Your butter cookies suck the nasty diseased taint of our fine pickled fish products.

Denmark: We have liberal sexual mores.

Norway: We, too, have liberal sexual mores, and no rampant kiddie porn problem.

Denmark: Oh yeah? Well, that is a valid point.

Then there’s the middlins, who have one glaring weakness they can’t possibly help, like South Korea’s situation with having a crazy, psychotic, and very well-armed brother just over the fence, or Florida’s dazzlingly talented yet immature youth movement. These are followed by the bottom dwellers of the rest of the top. Think of Hawaii as South Africa: Exotic! Exciting! Awesome relative to its neighbors, but still not punching G8 weight! But have you seen our lions and dazzling gold jewelry!

This week’s abomination is below. One clarification: our ballot below is the corrected ballot, which was not the hasty-as-usual ballot crapped into Brian’s inbox this a.m. that had–among other errors, a rise in Cincy after a loss, a few curious bunches of teams in the same conference, and a vote for ice cream at eight. Because we really, really wanted some ice cream this morning. Again, we remind you:

1. The arrows mean nothing.
2. We fucked up.
3. We’re clearly an ass. Asses. Damn plural first person…

Off with our heads, and on with the ballot…

Rank Team Delta
1 Ohio State —
2 Oklahoma —
3 South Florida —
4 LSU —
5 South Carolina —
6 Boston College —
7 Kentucky —
8 Arizona State 1
9 Kansas 1
10 Missouri 2
11 California 2
12 Oregon 2
13 Texas 2
14 Southern Cal 1
15 Florida 1
16 Penn State 1
17 Auburn 1
18 Cincinnati 10
19 Texas Tech —
20 West Virginia —
21 Tennessee —
22 Illinois —
23 Virginia Tech —
24 Hawaii —
25 Wisconsin —

Dropped Out:

Clarifications, errata, and outright shames.

WHA OK? Yes, Oklahoma. If you wonder what the methodology is, it’s a hybrid of resume balloting and truthiness subject to coffee, mood, and whatever we saw in the intestines of our daily pigeon kill this morning. (Augury–it’s what’s for breakfast.)

Which means that at this point, it’s absolute value voting, and that’s the absolute value we see. Boston College helped this by not trouncing Notre Dame, or even scoring as many points as Purdue did against the Irish. And South Florida could prove us very wrong by running Rutgers over with their Charismatic Fiero of Tampa Bay Area triumph. But for the top ten, that’s our value, with two notable creepers…

The last midgets up the hill. Arizona State may have peaked on the year with this ballot, since they’re both going into the grinding end of their conference schedule. Kansas, though, could pop up a few more spots over the rest of their angel-soft schedule. Their real bid for top 5 comes with a defeat of resilient Missouri and an appearance in the Big 12 Championship game. For an instant, the picture of Kansas in the national title game just flashed across our consciousness. We saw the Eternal Footman hold our coat, and snicker, and in short, we were afraid.

Climbers: Pretty much anyone between the 11-20 spots, really. We think brand name bargains are a-plenty down here, since many are retooling in angry fashion. Texas has begun this process, and we think Florida will do the same. This is the point in the movie where the soft version of the heroic theme song is playing, and they’re working out in montage at the gym like a madman. Or puking their puppet guts up in an alley in a drunken wallow of self-pity (see: USC.)

Texas Tech is always the dark horse in the Big 12, but keep an eye on them for real now that their defense isn’t playing under some exotic curse.

The rest? A glorious mess, of course.