Heads had to roll, and roll they did in this week’s blogpoll. In fact, if this were detached head theatre, this would be like the battle scene from Detached Head Theatre Presents: Mean Girls, the Director’s Cut. (The movie ended with a spectacular battle scene with no fewer than 57 decaptitations. Dr. Strangelove originally ended with the world’s biggest pie fight. The editing room floor has claimed much greatness.)

Anyway, outright apologies, errors, and hapless defenses of our poll follow.

Rank Team Delta
1 Ohio State 5
2 LSU 1
3 Oregon 1
4 Arizona State —
5 Oklahoma 2
6 Kansas 3
7 Missouri 2
8 Boston College 1
9 West Virginia 3
10 Connecticut 10
11 Texas —
12 Wake Forest 14
13 Clemson 13
14 California 9
15 Auburn 11
16 Tennessee 10
17 Georgia 9
18 Michigan 8
19 South Florida 11
20 Virginia Tech 5
21 Purdue 5
22 Alabama 1
23 Virginia 4
24 Hawaii —
25 Brigham Young 1

Dropped Out: Florida (#10), Southern Cal (#13), Penn State (#14), Kentucky (#16), Texas Tech (#17), UCLA (#18), Cincinnati (#22), Illinois (#25).

Please take our vote for tOSU at number one as a white flag of surrender. We ran out of reasons not to place them in the top spot this week.

Oregon and Arizona State will shake out soon enough, since they play this weekend in Eugene. (Rudy Carpenter’s banged up–advantage, Oregon.) Kansas and BC are more troublesome in terms of proofing; Kansas v. Missouri will be a pivotal game for both in the last week of the season, but even then you’ve got the confounder of the Big 12 game in there to boost/sink one team dramatically while others sit statically in the poll. Boston College looked shaky versus Virginia Tech, and when the ship starts to list they just keep throwing, throwing, and throwing with Matt Ryan. He attempted 52 passes in Blacksburg; do that enough against a Miami or Clemson through the home stretch, and any quarterback will make a critical mistake.

Clemson looks particularly nettlesome for BC: on the road in a difficult environment, clouds of bourbon wafting off the stands, a dominant run game to grind clock, and a decent enough defense to force Ryan into mistakes.

Florida, g0nz0rz. A defense with the give and tenacity of talc on the hardness chart gets you sent to poll purgatory. Pray for forgiveness and a final spot in the high teens.

Having given UConn the respect they deserve, we now fully expect them to cough up a home loss to Rutgers in return. MAO! Ditto for sentimental fave Wake Forest, who we’ve undoubtedly got too high, but that Jim Grobe just seduces us each time with his pluck and spunk. Plus they can beat anyone in their conference–that helps,too.

The rest, of course, is a total weeping mess. Especially the SEC knots with Auburn, Georgia, and Tennessee, and whatever the hell we’re going to do with South Florida. They’ve become the oversized dinner table of poll: they don’t fit in the living room, but you can’t fit them in the dining room, but it’s too nice to leave out in the garage…it’s a mess. But we admit that, and for our brave ignorance we demand cookies. Shortbread, preferably.