I agree with Chris, that it’s pointless to rank the top 25 teams in the middle of the season, but Gator Bone also has a point. You can’t just leave the top spot blank because the teams don’t look good. It doesn’t matter if they’re good, it just matters that you think they’re better than the other teams. Is Florida better than Texas? Is Alabama better than Florida? They could all be terrible, but if they were better than the even-more-terrible teams from the rest of the country, one of them has to be the best.

You: “…and the next batch of undefeateds have serious questions about their strength of competition.”

Me: Iowa is the only team in the country with wins over two teams in the BCS Top 25 (both on the road), plus Michigan (home). Their SOS is tougher than any of the four you rank 2-5. They haven’t given up a single point in the second half on the road. It’s worse if you consider they’re the only team in the Big Ten that has to play three Saturday night games, two on the road. Iowa has the schedule from hell, but they’re hanging in there. (Thank god we don’t have to play UNI again.)

I’m curious at your lack of excitement at Georgia Tech. I understand the mainstream’s disinterest in the flexbone, their contempt for the outlier, but they’re a one-loss team with the seventh toughest schedule in the country — and they’re getting better all the time. I will be a BEEEE if they survive Groh’s latest October asphyxiation.

UNM: definitely a knockout of a choice.

Bama’s offense is what most expected after losing arguably one of the best left tackles last year and several other key offensive players. They are a run first team that Saban prefers but the problem is they are turning the ball over too much on offense, luckily they have a defense that keeps their opponent from profiting from their mistakes.

Texas similar to Bama and Florida has problems with turning the ball over too much right now and not playing consistent.

I agree with Chris really there are no dominant teams in the league right now there are some good teams but none that stand head and shoulders above their competition.

But still, behind a 4-2 Arizona team that has losses to Washington and Iowa, uninspired victories over Central Michigan and Northern Arizona compared to Minnesota, Maryland and Eastern Washington? Aaaaaand, really not helping the cause too much here.

Go Bears!

The dramatic ending was intended farce. I’m obviously not going to stop reading the blog, although you do lose about 11 cool points for reiterating a Lou Holtz “point.”

My beef is that after some great games by the top teams and a couple of not-great games, all the talking heads have been saying exactly what you said since Saturday: “well, I don’t really want to have to pick a best team right now; none of them have looked dominant.” When there is only so much unique sports writing going around, I just wouldn’t expect to hear that sort of talk here.

If you bother to participate in the ongoing satire that is mid-season polling, you might as well make a good-faith effort to rank the teams. It’s a little ridiculous how much the margin and perceived “dominance” plays into everyone’s votes.

Less sincerely,

Ex-commentor

Their secondary has been dominant since Ole Miss 2008 so it might be worth taking a look to see if there’s some Smart Football going on, or if they just had a bad game. I realize the tackling was weak.

I think the overall message from my site should be that I don’t really focus on these kinds of metrics, and I don’t find them particularly useful in the long run — the problems are largely intractable. But overall, no, I don’t think any of the three top teams look that particularly good, and I don’t buy the “oh it was just great defense.” Yes they have good defenses but I watched the games and saw teams shooting themselves in the foot routinely. The poll only let me rank 1 through 25, so there were no ties or anything else. I’m confident that whoever emerges from the meat of the conference schedules and their conference championship games will have earned their spots. I mean the whole concept of midseason ballots is kind of loony to begin with.