This week’s blogpoll ballot follows below and YOU WILL HATE IT. Explanations and zigzaggy blast walls to divert your anger and disbelief follow.

Rank Team Delta
1 Alabama 4
2 Texas
3 Southern Cal
4 Florida 3
5 Brigham Young
6 Boise State 8
7 Oklahoma State 6
8 California 2
9 Penn State 3
10 Mississippi 2
11 Missouri
12 Oklahoma 8
13 Cincinnati
14 Ohio State 7
15 LSU 4
16 Miami (Florida)
17 Notre Dame 4
18 Georgia Tech 3
19 Virginia Tech 10
20 Utah 8
21 Kansas
22 Florida State
23 Nebraska
24 Georgia 8
25 Texas Tech 5
Last week’s ballot

Dropped Out: TCU (#17), Iowa (#18), Oregon (#19), North Carolina (#22), Oregon State (#24), South Florida (#25).

Pardon me, but is that Power-Poll-ish? Yes, a bit, but you have two choices as a pollster: go on your sepia-toned memories of yesteryear, or go based on what you have in front of your eyeballs in the shifty but very much present now. The team that put on the best total performance–and the one we saw with our own eyeballs live–was Alabama, who played well in two phases of the game and decently on special teams (versus a very good VT special teams squad MAYBE YOU’VE HEARD OF IT BEAMERBALL’D.)

The others at the top balance the evident and enviable talent of the four or five teams in college football with top rank talent at every position versus the relative worth of their opponent, in descending order. Playing Charleston Southern told you nothing about Florida, while USC and Texas did slightly better on this count. In reality, those three teams are tied in our mind, with Florida pulling into the fourth spot because they played against a D-1AA team, and that has to be penalized somewhere in our universe.

BYU and Boise? Hey, they actually played someone, won, and did so on the national stage. It is early in the season, and there should be huge variances due to a very tiny sample size. The same goes in affirmative for Cal, Missouri, Miami, and anyone else who actually played someone. You may not like it when a Rocky Mountain fattie like Rulon Gardner beats a chiseled Russian god like Alexei Karelin, but it happens, just as it did when BYU beat Oklahoma. This week, they get the gold. That will even out as the season goes on if you like actually ranking what you’re seeing out of a team, or we could just go ahead and keep Oklahoma above them because veeee know soooo much about Oklahoma that you didn’t see on the field. Our choice is to go with what is actually happening with respect toward perceived overall talent, not the other way around.

Ditto for the losers: Florida State, Georgia, and Virginia Tech all actually played someone, though we’re thinking UNC could have easily taken Georgia’s place now that we’re looking at it. If you’re to be punished for playing layup competition, then you shouldn’t be excoriated for taking a loss to quality competition early on, especially if you looked respectable doing it.

Please declare any illogical votes: LSU is too high, but Washington looks to be awake and playing football now, and we’re smitten by their shiny amounts of talent just like everyone else. On Kansas, we plead infatuation with fist-pumping genius Todd Reesing; Cincy was impressive, but reeks a bit of Big East Charity Pick Of the Week; TCU could easily be in there if they played last week, too, were we not willing to take a flyer on Texas Tech and the inspiration Leach has been given by his sweet new parking spot. Based on one week U-Dub is waiting in the wings, but correcting for “UGOGIRL” sentiment keeps them on the lip for now.

BUT BUT BUT BUT– That’s why the Blogpoll takes more than one ballot, lawya.