Whenever someone wants to point out the stupidity of polls they point to Team X losing to Team Y who lost to Team Z, but because of when they were beaten and if Team Z was unranked or below the other teams beforehand, you end up with rankings that make it seem as if X is better than Y who is better than Z despite the head-to-heads. The problem of course is that these are rankings — opinions of how the teams stack up overall. These are not simple standings of Wins and Losses.
The poll is inherently flawed. But then with over 100 football teams, a simple standings would also be flawed. Some people knocked Iowa out of their polls for losing to Iowa State. Some really dinged Louisville after the first week for not blowing out Kentucky. I didn’t because those were annual rivalry games. With rivalry games, I generally throw out the score and just consider the outcome because there’s a lot more emotion and other factors in play.
So what am I saying? I’m saying don’t take a flawed approach too seriously, no matter who the pollsters are.
The full blogpoll is here.
Games I saw all or part of this weekend: TCU-Utah, Pitt Nebraska, FSU-BC, Tenn-Florida, SDSU-OSU, Oregon St-Louisville, MSU-ND, EMU-Mich, Vandy-Ole Miss, WVU-Md, Cal-Ill.
- Southern Cal — Cruising along
- Texas — Ditto
- Florida — Yes, they will lose at some point, but they are very good
- Louisville — Looks like they worked out some kinks
- Louisiana State — DNP
- Tennessee — Tough, hard loss, half-assed coaching
- Ohio State — Half-speed
- Virginia Tech — Cruising against Bobcat power
- Miami (Florida) — Very good road win
- Georgia — Cruising
- Purdue — Surprised me by winning
- Iowa — Angry, took it out on a directional school
- Florida State — Showing that BC can change conferences, but can’t change history
- Notre Dame — Heh
- Michigan — Another directional Michigan, another blowout
- Cal — They just keep winning
- Michigan State — Just because they beat ND, doesn’t mean I’ll rank them higher
- Georgia Tech — Playing much better defense than I thought
- Arizona State — Very good rebound
- Iowa State — DNP
- Texas Tech — Karma should bite them hard in the ass for this non-con
- Vanderbilt — Deserved, and they should enjoy it while it lasts
- Auburn — Back to beating on patsies
- Toledo — Beat up on Temple, almost counts as a DNP
- West Virginia — Two pretty good road wins earns them this (grudgingly)
New to the poll: Michigan State, Vanderbilt, Auburn and WVU.
Out of the poll: Oklahoma, Clemson, Fresno State, BC.
