Rank	Team	Delta
1	Texas
2	Florida
3	Alabama
4	Cincinnati	1
5	TCU	2
6	Boise State
7	Georgia Tech	2
8	Iowa	4
9	LSU	2
10	Oregon	2
11	Miami (Florida)	2
12	Pittsburgh	5
13	Ohio State	2
14	Houston	2
15	Arizona	9
16	Southern Cal	2
17	Oregon State
18	Virginia Tech	3
19	Penn State	9
20	Utah	4
21	Oklahoma State	1
22	Stanford
23	Wisconsin	4
24	Clemson
25	Brigham Young
Last week’s ballot

NOTES APOLOGIES ETC.

–For the nth time: never mind the deltas.

–No, we’re not going to rank Pitt that high, since putting them where we did already feels like doing the splits over a steak knife. They lost to NC State and will implode at any second oh you just watch YOU JUST WATCH. (weeps, doesn’t know what’s real anymore.)

–Iowa doesn’t deserve to fall that far, or maybe they do. Requesting input.

–Ditto for Oregon, who…well, we still aren’t really sure what happened to them, because saying “you got run tha fuck ovah” can’t really be considered any form of analysis whatsoever.

–Seriously, don’t mind the deltas.

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

Si, Tejas. They looked the best and played a team without Joe Cox playing quarterback, a team that has Zac Robinson, a real live boy unlike Richtetto’s albino puppet son. Upon losing in Jacksonville Cox was kidnapped by a cruel carnivale, and was forced to perform giddy little musical numbers to crowds of drunken peasants who delighted in his almost lifelike actions. Only late at night, sleeping in a small patch of moonlight on his cage floor, would he recall the kindness of his maker and father. In this version of the story, Coxocchio is eaten by a huge whale named Carlos Dunlap, and suffocates in his belly.

So, yeah. The quality opponent makes a difference here, and they could flip-flop just as easily over the next few weeks.

Boise still over Oregon. Were it not for the head-to-head, we’d have Oregon over them after the Dishumilarassment of USC this weekend, but that’s all we have to go on: what actually happened on the field. The rest is just guesswork based on perceived goodness and the assumption that Iowa has a cornfield of cult-children casting powerful runes to protect their every play this season. Hezekiah, a fifth interception! Fetch the young schoolchild! Their innocent blood will guide Stanzi’s hand in victory. Enoch! More nachos!

The rest: Bloody mess. Get to the bottom and do your own 18-25 and find sheer arbitrary shuffling in every direction. HOW COULD YOU because after a certain threshold in the mid-teens they are all the same team: error-prone, saddled with two losses, and deciding internally between a bowl game named after an insurance, financial services, or tech company or one named after a household product or truck stop.

The draft is as always, merely drafty. Comments and statements of outright disgust should go below.

–First draft, and still mostly a mess.

–Whither Penn State, whose only real game came against a team that beat them by assembling spare points left over by the 1994 Penn State team while their defense and special teams saved the day?

–What of Iowa, who is either the grim subway groper waiting to molest the season in rush hour crowd, or the lurking Big Ten Team of Disappointment waiting to happen?

–Miami is above Virginia Tech, who we now have to assume just caught the ‘Canes on a day when they did not have Jacory Harris’s magical Louis Vuitton scarf in hand.

–The Mountain West teams not named TCU just sprinkle themselves somewhere between 16-25 week to week like cake decorations. Ooh, let’s dust some BYU on there!

–Just a draft. Add comments, outrage, etc.

Rank	Team
1	Alabama
2	Florida
3	Texas
4	Houston
5	Boise State
6	Ohio State
7	Virginia Tech
8	Oregon
9	Cincinnati
10	Iowa
11	Oklahoma
12	Southern Cal
13	Miami (Florida)
14	Oklahoma State
15	Penn State
16	California
17	TCU
18	LSU
19	UCLA
20	Auburn
21	Kansas
22	Georgia
23	South Carolina
24	Mississippi
25	Minnesota

This was so much easier before people actually knew shit. Before you say a word: this is wacky, week-to-week voting with a hint of correction for perceived talent level, potential, and past performance. You know who’s not going to stick around most likely? Houston, Boise, and Oregon, because Houston and Boise will be dragged down by the mediocre competition they play, and because Oregon will follow up a carpet-bombing of Cal by having their star corner get de-kneed and blowing an easy Pac-10 game. Re: Oregon? You play one highly ranked team and lose on the road and then dishumilatinate the highest ranked team in your conference, you get perks. Re: Houston? Big 12 South wins should count just as much in September as they do in November, when the Big 12 gets their annual run in the polls off conference play. It’s a trick of the calendar at this point not to credit them.

The rest: Is a bloody mess. Where the hell do you put Iowa, other than above Penn State and below Ohio State, who would probably beat them in a 6-2 horror show leaving non-Big Ten fans holding their own eyeballs in hand at the end in order to ensure they could never watch such football horror ever again. USC is off the boards in terms of solid betting thanks to offensive woes, Miami and OK State are erratic, Penn State looked atrocious, there’s a knot of SEC teams at the bottom you can untangle if you’ve got three months of conference play, and GODDAMN THIS MADNESS.

Pretty sure Minnesota’s a rock-solid 25, though.

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

Endless coups. Number one should not be a static thing this early in the season, especially with our tiny but growing sample size. Going into Columbus and surviving in front of scarlet maelstrom (and a game OSU defense) gets USC the top spot, especially since they did so with a hobbled Taylor Mays and a freshman quarterback who could not feel his right shoulder for the third quarter. The degree separating them from Alabama in terms of absolute demonstrated value is marginal at best; we give USC the nod for playing a full road game, as opposed to the half-road game they played in a split crowd in ATL.

Florida bumps up for digesting Troy properly, a tougher game offensively than one might think as Troy’s defense will size up nicely by the end of the year, and was just blown out by a Florida team that snoozed through the first quarter. Texas also played a deceptively tough game at Laramie, where they too struggled early before hitting the afterburners in the second half. BYU hangs steady at five for the moment, riding largely on last week and the proper disposal of Tulane.

The rest: Oklahoma and VT bounced back nicely, and we try to actually reward teams that play people early and play them tight. Ditto for OSU, still the likely Big Ten champ, and for Georgia, whose defense supplied the butt against South Carolina in lieu of last week’s offensive butt-supplying. Houston pops in as this year’s Texas Tech.

Dropped: Texas Tech, for playing next to no one; Kansas, largely as a result of other teams moving up, not because of anything they did; Florida State, for almost losing to Jacksonville State Florida State almost lost to Jacksonville State type that a lot it feels soooooo good.

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

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.

Rank	Team
1	Florida
2	Texas
3	Southern Cal
4	Oklahoma
5	Alabama
6	Penn State
7	Ohio State
8	Mississippi
9	Virginia Tech
10	California
11	LSU
12	Utah
13	Oklahoma State
14	Boise State
15	Georgia Tech
16	Georgia
17	TCU
18	Iowa
19	Oregon
20	Texas Tech
21	Notre Dame
22	North Carolina
23	Nebraska
24	Oregon State
25	South Florida

Really, once you get past the first two teams, there are only a few certain tiers you can file teams into:

Florida, Texas: Hugely talented blue-chip covered glory bombs studded with talented gamebreakers not losing any significant continuity along lines or under center.

Oklahoma, USC, Ohio State, Alabama, Penn State. See above, but with flux along lines and at skill positions.

The Bourgeoisie Everyone to the mid-teens or so, depending on your fine gradations. Virginia Tech wouldn’t be here, but the loss of Darren Evans moves them into the firmly offense-deficient category for the moment until someone begins getting steady production out of the backfield besides him. Mississippi is probably the best of these on paper, and sure, they’ll blow it and win eight games like Houston Nutt teams under pressure have done in the past, but what we have is paper, so there’s your paper eight. All of these teams have at least one glaring weakness.

The Middle Class. A diverse middle class, at that: wacky fauxhemians (Texas Tech), the loud nouveau-riche (Oklahoma State,) and last year’s flash aristocrats Georgia, who fell from grace and now must work their way up from middle management all over again.

The rest, as usual, is a bleeding mess, but remember: it’s pulled from the same place everyone else is getting their preseason polls, and that is directly and deeply from the ass. Personally, we liked Schnelly’s better after the top slot.

(HT: Doc Saturday from this video.)

That meal was so good my left arm is tingling. The best and brightest part of our trip to West Virginia came with a visit to Tudor’s Biscuit World, a local breakfast chain peddling solidified balls fluffy lard and and salt conglomerates colloquially referred to as “biscuits,” a misleading term given their pillowy size and mineral heft.

Facing a menu listing the “Mountaineer,” the “Thundering Herd,” and the “Black Lunge Hackworthy,” we chose the “Rocket.” The full name has to be “Rocket (To The Crypt)”, as it is a piece of country-fried steak, one large fried egg, and a brick of hashbrowns held together by one gigantic biscuit pie. We were concerned the instant we picked it up and thought “mmm. Heavy.”

We didn’t eat for another six hours, which is good, as we’re pretty sure part of the biscuit is still lodged whole in our aorta. Also seen: a coal train on fire, a guy who almost blindsided Cuddles Swindle’s truck backing out of a liquor store clearly inebriated, and a fat redneck who made it all the way to the safety fence snow-tubing. Add in the local cable access showings of the West Virginia toughman competition, and it was pure entertainment all around.

It’s like Miami, but without the beach, hot weather, or Miami. Oklahoma has contacted former Canes qb Robert Marve about coming to Norman. Marve, who suffered under Patrick Nix, “ofensiv koordinater”, would miss a year and slide right into competition following the likely departure of Sam Bradford in 2009.

Here’s head coach Chip Bellotti. Or Mike Kelly. Um. The convoluted coaching situation and staff turnover is taking hunks out of Oregon’s recruiting class for 2009. For those who don’t follow Oregon football’s every burp and hiccup–and we know you do–Chip Kelly is the “coach-in-waiting” there, therefore no one’s really sure who’s making what calls or hiring who to do what. Other than that, nothing’s wrong whatsoever.

HIRE MICHAEL IRVIN. DO IT. Notre Dame is looking to hire ex-NFL players as grad assistants, presumably to tell them all about the league they will not be drafted into, and therefore motivate them to succeed in other fields.

Contains physics. Run. Examine the aerodynamics of a football here, and marvel at the science-like content. Stephen Garcia doesn’t care if it’s shaped like a flying donkey dick, man. Just give it to him and he’ll throw it like Zeus throws fuckin’ thunderbolts (directly into the arms of someone in another uniform, but whatever. Live by the bomb, die by the bomb, baby.)

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida	25
2	Utah	24
3	Southern Cal	23
4	Texas	22
5	Oklahoma	21
6	Penn State	20
7	Alabama	19
8	Texas Tech	18
9	Ohio State	17
10	Oregon	16
11	Boise State	15
12	Mississippi	14
13	Virginia Tech	13
14	Georgia	12
15	Oklahoma State	11
16	Iowa	10
17	Oregon State	9
18	Cincinnati	8
19	Florida State	7
20	Missouri	6
21	TCU	5
22	Georgia Tech	4
23	West Virginia	3
24	LSU	2
25	Brigham Young	1

Utah at number two?

I see we have some daddy issues to work out. Sure, you think they could beat USC. And I could out-hustle a Tasmanian jew in game of three-card monte. You gave Alabama sedatives. Don’t lie to me. The screens will show it. I’m just sitting here seeing how far you’ll take a lie before we have to come in and save you from your own lying mouth. Don’t try to to take me for a ride. I usually pay to have that done by the hour, if you know what I mean. And what I mean is that I use prostitutes. Expensive ones.

Texas Tech that high? Now I know you’re doing drugs. Was it toner? Cheap, virtually untraceable? Or is the tumor in your head you’ve been hiding all these years that made you do it? Yes, I’m an addict, the most coherent, well-composed addict you’ve ever seen who never misses a day of work for the convenience of plotline. Nevermind that the real pill addicts you know spend days in bed at a time and couldn’t properly diagnose the source of their own farts. Perhaps you just think only losing to Oklahoma and Ole Miss means something. Then again, you would, since losers like you like to make dignified math of their losses.

You don’t have lupus. It’s not lupus. Also, your tie’s ugly, and your wife knows you’re cheating.

Hand me a dry-erase marker. You need TCU higher, as they dusted the Boise State team you have ranked so preciously high. Only a fool would miss that, but you are Armenian, and demonstrating random and extremely specific racist tendencies as I do, I’ll just say that’s not surprising given your tendencies. (Agreed–that’s just random error.) Georgia Tech over LSU–now you’re just being retarded, and am calling the nurses to put corks on all of your forks to keep you from eating your own eyeballs.

What could cause someone to be so stupid?

Chase: Sarcoid. It’s got to be sarcoid.

Dr. House: You always say that, Kangaroo Jack. I’m guessing you put this blogpoll together on the morning after the national title game and are just now realizing what a colossal mistake it is, right? RIGHT? Don’t lie to me. I’m trying to save your life.

If you need me, I’ll be in my office drinking a bottle of scotch, popping pills, considering the dark mysteries of the universe to a classic rock song, and playing with an enormous tennis ball.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	—
2	Oklahoma	3
3	Texas	1
4	Florida	1
5	Penn State	2
6	Southern Cal	—
7	Ohio State	2
8	Utah	—
9	Cincinnati	3
10	Boise State	—
11	Oregon State	2
12	Texas Tech	10
13	TCU	8
14	Oklahoma State	3
15	Georgia Tech	11
16	Georgia	1
17	Florida State	9
18	West Virginia	5
19	Pittsburgh	3
20	Missouri	6
21	Mississippi	5
22	Oregon	4
23	Boston College	3
24	Ball State	1
25	Michigan State	8

Play the Citadel, get docked glory points. We know, scheduling, blah blah…but even though they’re our team, you can’t get us to act like they didn’t have a bye this week.

Three ACC teams? Yes, but they could be three completely different ACC teams next week, so don’t get cockbent over it.

Dropped: You’re damn tootin’ right we dropped LSU. They lost every game they played on CBS. You defile the Vernedome with such limp performance, you take the mail chute down 25 floors out of the rankings.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	—
2	Texas Tech	—
3	Florida	1
4	Texas	1
5	Oklahoma	—
6	Southern Cal	—
7	Penn State	—
8	Utah	1
9	Ohio State	1
10	Boise State	—
11	Oklahoma State	—
12	Cincinnati	7
13	Oregon State	13
14	Missouri	2
15	Georgia	1
16	Pittsburgh	3
17	Michigan State	2
18	Oregon	8
19	Miami (Florida)	7
20	Brigham Young	2
21	TCU	—
22	Maryland	4
23	West Virginia	—
24	LSU	2
25	Ball State	1

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: What the hell are all those Big Ten teams doing in there?

Should LSU be ranked? Probably not, but we ended up with two empty slots after ranking the 23 teams deserving mention. The two teams benefitting from this absence created by incompetence and an outbreak of MEH all over the place: West Virginia and LSU, who we put in because, well, they’re talented and shiny and mismanaged at the moment in a number of colorful and interesting ways.

Miami? Yes, they benefit from the “Outstanding We Have to Rank Some Teams from the ACC” this week. Crazypants conference ensures this could be two entirely different teams this week.

Ohio State isn’t that good! Yes, but so few teams are legitimately excellent they’re able to hang around. Also, Terrelle Pryor thinks college football is easy.

Ball State Ball State Ball State WAAAAAAHHHH!!! Sit down, Whitlock. On a sturdy chair, please. We’ll bump them up if they beat Central Michigan on Wednesday night in another one of the MAC’s plans to make us admit in public that we will sit at home on an irregular football night watching MAC football rather than socialize. Don’t judge us.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	—
2	Texas Tech	—
3	Texas	2
4	Florida	—
5	Oklahoma	1
6	Southern Cal	2
7	Penn State	4
8	Ohio State	2
9	Utah	2
10	Boise State	3
11	Oklahoma State	4
12	Missouri	6
13	Pittsburgh	11
14	Georgia	—
15	Michigan State	1
16	North Carolina	10
17	Florida State	9
18	Brigham Young	8
19	Cincinnati	2
20	Virginia Tech	6
21	TCU	12
22	South Carolina	4
23	West Virginia	11
24	Ball State	1
25	Tulsa	—

Yes, it sucks. To be frank, we don’t even like our number one at this point. Alabama’s offense has spells of crapulence, and their signature wins against Georgia, Clemson, and LSU look less impressive with each passing week of 2008 Georgia/Clemson/LSU football. (Defense: optional!)

Texas? Sure. Guesswork. It’s all just lunchmeat thrown on the asses of so many miserable groupies at this point. (PAPA ROACH YEAAAHHH!!!!) The randomized excellence of the Big 12 South right now forces us to put Texas above Oklahoma because they beat them. Otherwise Oklahoma score points like a mid-debate fired-up Christopher Hitchens on his second bottle of sherry on anyone they choose to annihilate.

The rest: hopeless. The easy crutches are all gone. Pittsburgh? Really? Michigan State? Don’t make us rank Virginia Tech, life; no please, do not make us rank them, or Minnesota, who has the thinnest 7-2 record in the nation. Michigan and Tennessee being decent made this 8 percent easier in the good old days, but now we’re left in the soup line ladling out Cincinnati and TCU gruel. Spare us a dime. This season has left us bereft of solid rankings, and a bailout is needed.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Oklahoma	4
2	Alabama	6
3	Penn State	3
4	LSU	1
5	Texas	7
6	Missouri	1
7	South Florida	4
8	Brigham Young	2
9	Georgia	7
10	Southern Cal	9
11	Utah	8
12	Auburn	2
13	Vanderbilt	11
14	Kansas	4
15	Florida	11
16	Oklahoma State	—
17	Texas Tech	4
18	Wisconsin	1
19	Ohio State	4
20	Connecticut	6
21	Northwestern	5
22	Michigan State	4
23	Virginia Tech	3
24	Boise State	4
25	Ball State	1

Initial proviso: Alabama could just as easily be number one. They might very well be the best team playing the best football in the country, but we’ll happily admit that the reason Oklahoma is up there despite blowing the doors off the flimsiest of opponent prior to this weekend is that they’ve been better with the established Stoops Performance Machine longer than Alabama. That is the only thing keeping Alabama from that spot in our minds: the established performance of the Sooners over time. In terms of 2008 resume, Alabama’s performance is the strongest in the nation, and a brutal, brawny kind of strong, not a bronzered-up Mr. Olympia-kind of strong. (See: USC.)

Top ten notes: Penn State might really be that good, and we’ll ride that like the MARTA until it breaks. LSU sleptwalk a bit against Mississippi State, but given the MSU offense, it’s hard not to put up your feet and watch them shriek as they tase themselves over and over again; therefore don’t take a one spot drop too seriously–especially when they have the best shot at Alabama down the road. (Tennessee? Auburn? Have you seen Chris Todd’s fungo game? It’s unstoppable.)

Still weak on Missouri, whose defense brings the butt every other game, but Texas’ defense and the newly efficient Colt McCoy bull Texas up a few notches. BYU and South Florida because who the hell else goes there who’s actually played someone? And Georgia over Southern Cal because the Bulldogs actually lost to a really good team who did not lose to Stanford. (For contrast, see Oregon State’s pissypants performance against Penn State and then reprocess in light of their play against USC, and the continual bullishness for Penn State makes at least a bit more sense.)

As for what Auburn is doing there….the minute someone has a good day against that defense, they get served their eviction notice from the top ten, because their offense set next to Tennessee’s killed the ghost of Bill Walsh yesterday. You didn’t think ghosts could die? They couldn’t until…whatever that was happened. Chris Todd: 14/23, 93 yards, 1 TD/1 INT. Gack.

There is no safe word for this take your whipping. Florida and Wisconsin’s losses were both shameful in nature, and they eat hot ranking death for it. Wisconsin’s may have been the worst in nature–a collapse with a 19-7 lead–but losing at home in a ridiculously error-prone and fitful effort has its own unique and foul odor, too.

The rest is a weeping mess. Oklahoma State/Texas Tech are the same team, and haven’t played anyone, and just sit there like a stubborn bolus in the middle of the poll. Vanderbilt is up there, meaning they’ll lose when Gameday curses them and forces all of us to drop our monocles and flashy canes in shock. Ball State gets a shoutout at 25 because we want to get Jeff George’s autograph via Jason Whitlock, because he is our hero (for stealing good money from a successful corporate entity for years without being caught.)