A little movement at the top: I thought Texas looked the best, while Alabama struggled with Tennessee (hail Cody!) and Florida again looked less than superior, at least on offense (defense played great, again). (And I don’t think anyone who watched the UF-Miss. State game thought it was just a defensive struggle and that, in actual fact, the football was a superior brand.) After that I still like the undefeateds hanging around. I moved TCU ahead of Boise because they have looked great. Not entirely fair, but, hey, that’s polling. Cincy continues to look dominant within the domain of the Big East, even with its backup quarterback, and so hold off a one-loss Southern Cal team. GT continues to be a tough, tough team — many wrote them off as underrated early, and they probably were, but they have responded to the Miami game and have done all you could ask for. The next batch of teams will have to continue winning to stay up there or rise, and in the case of teams like Oklahoma State, that would involve huge upset victories over Texas and if they can do that, the sky is the limit (though likely not the BCS title game). The same goes for Oregon, who faces Southern Cal this weekend.

Central Michigan made it on here as my underappreciated team. They managed to beat Michigan State in excruciating fashion (much as everyone else has seemed to do). Cal and Wisconsin snuck back in after earlier stumbles and have a chance of moving up if they continue to play well.

Okay, so the obvious thing is I ranked New Mexico #1. This was a protest vote, as I initially tried to make my ballot with the #1 slot empty. It kicked it back to me so I had to remake the ballot all over again. I watched all three of the “top three” teams last weekend — Texas, Florida, and Alabama — and am not impressed by any of them. Well that’s not totally fair. All three defenses look solid overall, with Florida’s putting in the weakest performance by far (I think Arkansas runningback Dennis Johnson is somewhere still breaking tackles), and Mark Ingram is a difference maker for the Crimson Tide. Yet none has distinguished themselves — and the next batch of undefeateds have serious questions about their strength of competition — so I picked a hopeless team to be a placeholder, Mike Locksley’s inept New Mexico squad. Again, were the software to let me leave it blank, I would have.

From there, much of the debate recently was about USC’s low spot with the computers when the BCS poll came out. Well count me with them. They lost to Washington, which means they have no right to complain about anything, and they haven’t exactly looked dominant in their other wins. (And it doesn’t help that Ohio State looked awful against Purdue, Washington lost to Arizona State, and USC nearly let Notre Dame fight back.) They have time to recover — I’m looking forward to the USC-Oregon game — but for right now, they are where they are. If nothing else, both Miami and LSU have “better” losses than does USC.

From there, the biggest difference is I probably have Houston higher than many. For the moment I’m willing to forgive their fluke loss to UTEP, though I reserve the right to penalize them again later. They’ve looked quite good otherwise, and their offense will keep them competitive in any game they play.

Finally, I felt dirty leaving Kansas in the poll after they lost to Colorado, but felt I didn’t have much choice. I did let Idaho sneak in there — the Vandals are 6-1 and deserve it as much as any of the other teams in the 20-30 range.

• Alabama
• Florida
• Texas
• Cincinnati
• Boise State
• Virginia Tech
• Miami
• Iowa
• TCU
• Kansas
• South Carolina
• Ohio State

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

I now have Florida third. I know they didn’t play last week, so why did I move them lower? Tebow’s injury. This is not a resume thing, it is an intrinsic “power” ranking, and I think it fair. Had Tebow gone pro, we would have devalued them early, and the fact that Tebow might not play certainly affects one’s prediction for the Gators’ game against LSU. I don’t see why I’d have to ignore it. It is subjective, but that’s balloting. I have Alabama ahead of Texas because they have played quite well all year. This early though the whole 1-2-3 distinction is quite moot; it will be settled on the field one way or another.

A brief digression about resume ranking based on above. I like the resume ranking movement, but I disagree that it is the end all, be all of ballots. Yes, traditional power/prestige/reputation/impression ranking is subjective and often biased (sometimes intentionally, usually subconsciously). But that’s not a reason to go pure-resume, it is the reason why one person’s ballot doesn’t entail the whole. The various perceptions and little nuggets of insight get compiled into one specific whole — the wisdom of crowds. Computers aren’t allowed to consider margin of victory — regardless of how predictive that stat is for who might win a game — so their rankings have flaws, but humans can judge not just the margin but also the tenor of the game. Sometimes that is misleading, but, again, amalgamated, these subjective impressions can be a positive. LSU has not looked as good as their record; that is fair to consider, for example.

In any event, the rest of my ballot isn’t too controversial I think. It is the usual mix of “wow that team is lower than I thought, but hey I don’t like them that much more than the teams above them,” and “wow that team is higher than I’d think, but how do I rank them below a team with losses/bad losses/etc.” In other words, it is a quasi-rational quasi-subjective mix. The only notables are that I felt quite punitive to both Houston and Oklahoma. Oklahoma will have many chances to redeem itself and get back into the mix — two out of conference losses is not so crippling if they rebound. Houston might not have those opportunities, but you can’t lose to UTEP. I’m sorry. If they keep winning they will likely sneak back in (to some extent dependent on how Oklahoma State looks for the rest of the year), but them’s the breaks when you’re a non-BCS school. It’s not an argument against the small conferences, but there are simply fewer opportunities to evaluate those teams.

Some minor commentary after the jump.

We have now reached where almost any ballot starts being incoherent: enough teams have played each other that you don’t want to rank someone behind a team that beat them, but the teams also haven’t played enough games where a real order has shaken out. So I’m sure there are quibbles with my ballot, as there are with many others. I at least tried to respect head to head generally, but within reason. Southern Cal made a move up, but that reflects where the Pac-10 is. I had Cal beating them this week; now, not so much.

I moved Florida back up despite this Tebow business because I watched them play in person (bias?) and they were very, very impressive as a team. After the first quarter Rich Brooks and Meyer called a kind of truce, as Kentucky just does not come back from 31-0 in the first quarter. But of course all that is meaningless and in flux at the moment. (I do give Florida more credit for beating Kentucky than Texas beating UTEP.) ‘Bama looks great but I’m not sure if they have the firepower to beat Texas or Florida.

Of course, Florida plays LSU, and Tebow absolutely should not play, just as a precaution if nothing else. So who knows what that will bring. (Indeed, the whole thing was strange. Tebow was completely knocked out for a moment — legs splayed on the turf — and I would have taken Tim to get X-rays immediately, thinking of course what happened with Natasha Richardson. I could be interpreting it wrong, but Kentucky sent the cart and staff over and Florida’s trainers/team doctors waived them off at first. Tebow then sat on the sidelines, then did a bit of a tour around the stadium and of course threw up, and then only about 45 minutes to an hour later did they take him to the Kentucky medical center. )

From there, my ballot has a typical amount of movement because I care not one whit about consistency from week to week. Comments welcome.

[Update: Third time's the charm... I had UNC [and Ohio State] listed twice. I removed them and Pittsburgh snuck in. Wannstache is due for an upset loss, but otherwise his team is 2-0 and is the same squad people thought would win the Big East, though Cincy looks better so far.]
More “gestalt”

• There’s a solid case to be made that USC should have leapfrogged Florida to be number one because they played a quality opponent, but I can’t get past my gut feeling that Florida would roll USC if they played right now. Later in the season? Who is to say. UT sleepwalked part of the way past Wyoming — and they have more questions than does Florida, obviously — but if the ‘Horns throttle Texas Tech at home (who I dropped this week for playing nobody, and have their chance to jump up this weekend as well), then they could shoot to #1.
• Penn State also leapt in front of ‘Bama as they still had a bit of a hangover from bruising up Va Tech, and I’m keeping the mid-majors like BYU who have beaten people ahead of teams like LSU and Ole Miss who still look like they will be standing at the end of the year but haven’t been truly tested yet. Houston jumped up this week after the big victory against Oklahoma State — who I actually dropped, because seriously — and Utah might be a little high but we’ll see how they do against an unimpressive Oregon squad. If the Utes manhandle the Ducks, then that could really jam up impressions of them as compared with Boise State.
• For some others, Cincy is surging, Georgia Tech is hanging on, Miami is heading into more of its terrifying part of the schedule, and I gave Michigan the nod into the polls. Notre Dame had risen to as high as the top 15 in some polls; the Wolverines have looked much better than anticipated so they snuck in ahead of teams like Texas Tech that got dropped for not playing anyone legitimate yet.
• Some of the losers remain in the polls: I couldn’t drop all of them too far. I don’t know if that counts as improper path dependence because they were mostly highly ranked teams previously, but I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Virginia Tech are going to win plenty of games this year, despite early stumbles.

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

Now, some words on methodology:

This will be my thought process through most of the season.The BlogPoll makers (i.e. Brian Cook of mgoblog), tells us:

The poll’s goals are clearly stated. The AP poll is full of voters who vote team X super high in the preseason because of its schedule; this is strongly discouraged by the BlogPoll. Preseason polls are supposed to be exclusively about how good a team is thought to be, and postseason polls are supposed to be exclusively about how much a team has accomplished on the field.Â

Now… it is impossible to separate the former from the latter in late-season polls because college football provides such a sparse data set, but at the very least BlogPoll voters know they shouldn’t vote a 9-2 USC team #1 even if they think they’re the best team unless that 9-2 includes three killer nonconference matchups.

I agree for the most part, but I don’t know if it is that cut and dried. College football polls suffers from the intractable problem of ranking over a hundred teams that do not all play each other. Everyone has done the elementary problem where, for example, you ask how we might rank the 2008 football teams. Florida was the number one team, but wait: they lost to Ol’ Miss. Ol’ Miss in turn lost to South Carolina, which itself lost to Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt lost to Duke, and, well, let’s just stop. It gets even crazier when you start adding up scores: Florida beat Kentucky by X, which beat so-and-so by ten so Florida would beat them by 70 or whatever.

Compounding this problem is the fact that college football ends its season in a rather ambiguous manner, with a series of bowl games and then re-rankings. In the NFL, you can pretty easily do “power rankings,” because you know there will be a playoff at the end. This is not to say that the playoff will ultimately crown the “best” team, but if a team has three losses and another two, but you think the first is better, it’s fair to rank the first higher because you are sure they are more likely to win the rematch.

In college, however, it is, as I said, ambiguous. Texas beats Oklahoma; you happen to think Oklahoma is the better team; you rank Oklahoma higher. Or, alternatively, you say it was decided on the field and rank Texas higher. The Oklahoma guy says that Texas Tech beat Texas and OU beat TTech by about a thousand, and so on, and around we go.

Compounding this is the fact that the BCS, although I don’t think it is as bad as some of its detractors say, is not entirely fair. Or at least it doesn’t provide the same opportunity for a championship to all teams, based on money but also the not completely farcical fact that the non-BCS schools can pad their records against inferior teams, and a matchup between SEC #2 or #3 is still one they would be overmatched for (i.e. Georgia vs. Hawai’i, but then again there’s Utah vs. Alabama and Boise St. vs. OU). (Incidentally, didn’t LSU win a title with two losses recently? Including one to Kentucky?)

So what to do? This is the long way of saying that my poll will be a kind of “gestalt” approach, and therefore I will try to reflect the following “mix” of considerations:

• What teams do I think are the best? Who is playing the best? Generally, do I think team A would beat team B if they played.
• Who has the best chance of converting their season into a championship? The point of a poll is, in some respects, meant to reflect my perceived odds of a team winning it all. This will hurt non-BCS schools and will benefit teams with favorable schedules (contra possibly to Brian’s diktat above), but that is counterbalanced by …
• What teams have had the best “season,” and should be rewarded for winning the games they need to win and playing well? I may think a one or two loss USC is “better” than, say, an undefeated Utah, in the sense that if they played I’d be pretty sure USC would win, but maybe Utah deserves to be “rewarded” for its better season.

I take it that the BlogPoll seems aimed primarily at the last factor, but I can’t get around the fact that I think it is relevant that I think a team is flat better than another, or for that reason or another that team A is more likely to take home the BCS title than team B.

Thus, for this preseason poll I focused primarily on the first two factors, since the third is not yet relevant. (I was not interested in “rewarding” anyone for how they finished last year except insofar as it portends positive things for 2009.) It might be considered cheating, but I consulted Vegas’s odds of winning the BCS, because I do believe in the wisdom of crowds, though with limits. From there I applied my own gut feelings on teams. Some very basic specifics:

• Florida ought to win the title again unless something happens. That said, if you offered me Florida vs. The Field at even money, I’d obviously take it.
• The next two most likely contenders are Texas and OU, who of course will play each other and (theoretically, didn’t happen last year) settle who is the Big 12 delegate. I think OU loses more than people think, though McCoy still needs some runningbacks, secondary receivers to help Jordan Shipley and replace Quan Cosby, and for the D-Line to step up.
• Southern Cal I’m sure will be great, but they did lose a lot, and they are replacing their quarterback without any of the three offensive guys present throughout their big run (Chow, Sarkisian, Kiffin). Corp is hurt, so there’s Barkley? And yet, I still couldn’t rank USC behind a Big 10 team, hence their lead over Penn State (who I like more than the Pryor show from OSU).
• 11-13, Ol’ Miss, Oklahoma State, and Georgia Tech wound up being my “upstart” part of the poll. I actually think Georgia Tech is the most likely to fall back down. I’m a huge Paul Johnson fan, obviously, but in 2008 the Jackets were hit or miss and it would still be a solid move for Coach Johnson to finish in only the Top 25, and not this high. Ol’ Miss is harder to read. I like them and all, but the SEC is a buzzsaw from which I’m unsure they will escape.
• I could have had some of the non-BCS schools like TCU, Utah, and Boise ranked higher, but their stock was hurt by the fact that it is unrealistic for them to get to the BCS game. This is also why BYU didn’t get ranked: if they win their games, including one against Oklahoma, they could go to the highest heights, but I anticipate them taking some big losses. (Incidentally the same goes for Miami, who I think could be both improved this year and start 0-4 with a really tough schedule.)
• No Big East school was ranked in the USA Today Coaches poll, but that conference does get a spot in the BCS and I think they should be alright. People have Pittsburgh highly ranked, but that team has never put up much offense and they lost LeSean McCoy. As a result I think South Florida could finally burst through. Tough to call though. (Rutgers is the dark horse in that conference.) As a side note, Notre Dame benefited from the easy schedule/road-to-BCS position they are in. But seriously: who knows about that team? They could finish top 10 or out of the top 25; I wouldn’t be shocked either way.