Monday, September 20, 2010

2010 BlogPoll: Week 4 Ballot

I'm resisting the urge to raise the Huskers much higher on my ballot; I'm still not sold that Washington was a great opponent, though I think the Huskers played their best game of the season on Saturday.  That being said, I am moving the manic-depressive Oklahoma Sooners and the muddling Texas Longhorns below the Huskers for now.  Which Oklahoma team is the real OU? The one that blew out Florida State, or the one that struggled with Utah State and Air Force?  And while Texas is undefeated, I'm not sure I'm seeing a top ten team there just yet.

TCU's blowout of Baylor counts for a rise, so up they go.  Florida moves up in response to the demotion of the Sooners and 'Horns.  If you went to bed early, you missed Stanford absolutely crush Wake Forest in the really late-night ESPN2 game.  Arizona also vaults up by holding on to beat Iowa; that's not the same Arizona team we saw in San Diego.  Iowa doesn't drop as far because of the way they fought back against the Wildcats on the road.

I dropped USC and Wisconsin because I frankly wasn't impressed with either team.  Arizona State hasn't played anybody else yet, and lost due to a blocked extra  point.  Southern Cal muddled through with Minnesota much like they muddled through with Hawai'i in the season opener...a team that lost to Colorado on Saturday.  I'm keeping Virginia Tech in the Top 25 for now; I still believe last week was a fluke.

As always, this ballot is a draft, so if you have any feedback, comment below because I can change it until Wednesday.

Big XII PowerPoll
Now that we've got a little bit of data to work with, here's my first draft for a PowerPoll at the conference level.
  1. Nebraska
  2. Oklahoma
  3. Texas
  4. Texas Tech
  5. Kansas State
  6. Oklahoma State
  7. Missouri
  8. Texas A&M
  9. Kansas
  10. Iowa State
  11. Colorado
  12. Baylor
I actually think it was easier to group the teams at the top of the list than the bottom, as it's pretty easy to rank the top five teams. Oklahoma has had the best single game of all of the teams, but the inconsistency drops them to #2.  Missouri is undefeated as they should be, but both games against 1-A opponents have been much closer than they should be.  Likewise, A&M's struggles against a Sun Belt opponent should be turning up the thermostat under Mike Sherman's chair.  Colorado's second half performance against Hawai'i gets them out of the cellar thanks in part to Baylor's submission to Texas Christian.  You could make a case for any of the bottom four teams to be last on the list.

3 comments:

A J said...

As ridiculous as anything you've ever submitted

Husker Mike said...

With your track record of being consistently wrong (other than 2007), I'll take that as a resounding affirmation of this ballot.

Anonymous said...

We don't know who the top team in the Big 12 is but one thing we do know it's not Missouri.

Tell somebody you think the top team in the Big 12 is Nebraska they may disagree but they wouldn't say it wasn't out of the question. Tell somebody you think the top team in the Big 12 is Missouri and 5 hours later they would still be laughing.