BlogPoll Ballot: Week 2 Draft

by David Hooper on Sep 13, 2009 3:52 PM EDT

Somehow, this was less pleasant to assemble than last week's. Here's the rough draft; like last week, there are a few teams that seat in relatively well, but most of this is still mush. A few notes after the bump:

Rank	Team	Delta

1	Southern Cal	2
2	Florida	1
3	Alabama	1
4	Texas	2
5	Penn State
6	California
7	Brigham Young	1
8	Boise State	1
9	Oklahoma	1
10	Georgia Tech	1
11	LSU	1
12	Mississippi	1
13	Ohio State	1
14	TCU	1
15	Virginia Tech	2
16	Kansas	2
17	Utah	3
18	North Carolina	2
19	Cincinnati	5
20	Georgia	3
21	UCLA
22	Nebraska	1
23	Michigan
24	Houston
25	Auburn
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Oklahoma State (#7), Oregon State (#19), Tennessee (#22), Notre Dame (#25).

At the top. It wasn't a pretty game, but going into Ohio and beating The with a true freshman quarterback is noteworthy. USC will rightly be favored throughout, and I think they deserve the top slot so far. Otherwise, #2 through about #5 can go in any order. I don't really care about that level of detail yet.
Mid-majors. Houston deserves some attention after going into Stillwater and making Georgia look foolish by association. I'm thinking I should bump them ahead of Georgia right now, but I want some feedback first.
Oklahoma at #9. I don't know where to put them, but I don't think anybody else deserves to be ahead of them yet. They barely lost to BYU on a neutral field, and I have BYU at #7, so I'm ok with this. But I'm open to suggestion.
North Carolina. Help? What an ugly game.
Auburn. Are they better than Georgia right now? This is why I really don't care for polls this early in the season.
Missing. There are plenty of worthy teams still missing in the polls. I have a feeling I've missed some news from the weekend that would otherwise bump somebody in that isn't in right now.

The final ballot is due Wednesday. Let me know what you think.

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Until proven otherwise. . .

Florida is #1. They were #1 last year, they didn’t lose anybody, they’ve won two games by 50+ each. USC got a great road win, but it wasn’t even against a top 10 team, and it wasn’t dominant. UF is #1 until they lose, or at least win ugly.

Oklahoma State falls all the way out? They still have a win over Georgia. Their loss is against a team you still have at #24 in a classic letdown situation. I think that Okie State is better than Houston and would win 8/10. It just so happened that yesterday was following a massive win, and it was one of the 2. If anyone should fall out, it’s Georgia. They won at home against a mediocre team by a missed extra point to move to 1-1. That doesn’t sound like top 25 material to me.

by Incipient_Senescence on Sep 13, 2009 4:23 PM EDT reply actions

Ah, thanks.

I moved OkState down and lost track of them. I’ll re-evaluate.

by David Hooper on Sep 13, 2009 4:47 PM EDT up reply actions

What have we done lately?

UCLA, #21, what?

I’m a UCLA fan and that surprises me. Last year we didn’t do much, a rebuilding year.

I’m sure you’ll agree that 2008 was disapointing for the Vol’s too. Now you’ve got an entirely new coaching staff and you were ranked #22?

None of this makes a whole lot of sense and I don’t like it.

We need to see a few games of conference play. That is when we’ll start to know how teams should be ranked.

If UCLA can beat K-State, Stanford and Oregon, then I’ll expect them to break in to the rankings.

Good luck this year, but I would start a head coach search pretty soon if I were you.

by layout on Sep 13, 2009 4:39 PM EDT reply actions

I don't know who else to put ahead of UCLA at the moment.

So far, they’ve had a couple of nice games and, while having some weaknesses, they respond well to coaching and do a good job of avoiding said weaknesses. And to be honest, doing polls at all within the first 6 or so weeks makes no sense to me. But I’m a very strong proponent of resumes, as I think projections cause bias problems later on. And for the first two weeks, if the on-field performance is the only evaluation, UCLA hasn’t done that badly.

Last week, UT was absolutely phenomenal on the field. Yes, there’s the “it’s just” argument, but everything that is opponent-independent looked really good for them. It wasn’t unreasonable, for only 1 game of data for all 120 teams (and some not even that) to have UT there at the time, resume-wise. This week, not so much. So they’re out.

Variance is a complete non-issue to me this early. I would drop all 25 teams out from the previous week if the games suggested I should, and I wouldn’t blink an eye.

by David Hooper on Sep 13, 2009 4:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Against WKU, Tennessee’s defense and rushing game was great, but its passing game was no different than it was against a tomato can in 2008. Yesterday, the defense remained good but the rushing game disappeared and the passing game was disastrous. Tennessee is not that good right now and UCLA didn’t exactly play all that well. The Bruins don’t deserve to be ahead of, for instance, Houston, who beat an Oklahoma State team that’s far better than Tennessee.

Also, Ohio State was the better team for 55 minutes against USC. If you feel like emphasizing resume this early be my guest, but if you look beyond the final score, you’d find a fairly flawed USC team. Their defense was helped by the overly conservative Tresselball, and the very vanilla offense only put together one scoring drive that wasn’t assisted by either a turnover or a prevent defense (and OSU look pretty prevent-y on that final USC possession). Again, I can’t argue if you’re putting subjectivity in the backseat already, but USC was not impressive at all last night.

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by Year2 on Sep 13, 2009 5:10 PM EDT up reply actions

You're probably right on that.

I’ll move Houston further up (which I wanted to do anyhow, but I wanted to hear further first).

I’ll also move Alabama up to #1. They beat a really good VTech team and have looked good in two weeks so far.

And yeah, we’ll disagree all the way on this, but I’m a firm believer that resume is the only thing that matters in polls. I’m also a firm believer that polls are ludricous this early in the season, but since we have to have them, I’m determined to do the best I can.

by David Hooper on Sep 13, 2009 6:23 PM EDT up reply actions

I think any other top-tier coach with that team beats USC last night – guys like Saban and Meyer (even Carroll when people look past the groovy dude zen-hippy act) get a reputation for being hyper-competitive jerks… and that reputation may be justified. But part of the hyper-competitiveness is a killer instinct that puts the boot in when the chance is there. Tressel just doesn’t seem to have that instinct. (Which is curious – most of the other ‘bunker-down on any lead’ coaches are NFL guys who haven’t adjusted to the volatility of the college game, but Tressel came out of I-AA.)

Personally, I believe Ohio State will continue to disappoint until Tressel breaks his mold in the same way Mack Brown finally did, and crafts the offence around the talents – and foibles – of his QB. I just don’t know if he’s capable of doing it (though if the super-crusty old-style Mack Brown can do it, there’s no reason Tressel can’t.)

by peachy rex on Sep 13, 2009 6:34 PM EDT up reply actions

Alabama?!?! Slow down there.

When you say Alabama has looked good for two weeks, did you forget the part where they only had a 6 point lead on FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL with 19 minutes left in the game? That is not an impressive second game at all. They did look impressive in week one, but not #1 impressive, especially when they played to the level of the opposition in week 2.

Really, none of the top 4 teams looked impressive in week 2 except for Florida. USC got outplayed but still managed to get the job done on the road. That’s what good teams do, but it isn’t enough to make me consider them #1. Texas and Alabama both struggled mightily until late in the game. Florida didn’t have the best start themselves, but they woke up in the 2nd quarter (not the 4th) and cruised to a 50 point win over a much better team than FIU or Wyoming. I hate ‘em with a passion, but I don’t see how there’s any argument here.

by Incipient_Senescence on Sep 13, 2009 6:43 PM EDT up reply actions

That was partly to tweak Year2.

I saw the OSU/USC game only intermittently, and the bits and pieces I saw were of two very good teams. So I initially went with that. I saw Alabama not at all, but neither have I seen Florida. In two games, I can make an argument that Bama’s VTech win and FIU win were collectively more commendable than Florida’s CSouthern and Troy wins. If so, why not reward them?

But like noted before, I’ll tweak again. My early season ballots are written in water.

by David Hooper on Sep 13, 2009 8:20 PM EDT up reply actions

Really?

Good luck this year, but I would start a head coach search pretty soon if I were you.

So I guess you said the same thing about your head coach after a 4-8 season? Take off your California blinders for a while.

by danmarcel on Sep 13, 2009 7:50 PM EDT up reply actions

Yes, really

My advice isn’t about performance on the field. I don’t know if he’ll be any good in that respect.

The fact is that he came from SC, where the players get paid, they recruit thugs who think they “own the police” (and that is a real quote) and the NCAA turns a blind eye because they are the big money maker in the nation’s second largest media market.

That might seem like throwing rocks in a glass house when our coach is “slick Rick” but let’s look at that.

Neuheisel was involved in about 50 “minor violations” recruiting at Colorado. You can read about it here.

To me, that doesn’t seem all that bad, he spent a few more dollars than he was allowed (far less than $1,000 total) and there was some recruiting done at times when it wasn’t allowed.

At Washington, he got busted for playing a game of HORSE with a football recruit because obviously HORSE is the way you try out a football player. Then he got busted for filling out a bracket for the NCAA tournament with the school’s permission.

And guess what, both of those were public schools without a whole lot of NCAA clout, very different from USC.

Since Neuheisel has come to UCLA he’s been squeaky clean and you can bet that there are plenty of people watching him.

Kiffin already has 6 “minor violations” I think and you’ve had him less than a year. Watch out.

by layout on Sep 14, 2009 12:15 PM EDT up reply actions

So in other words,

if Kiffin keeps it up, he can coach at UCLA?

by David Hooper on Sep 14, 2009 12:41 PM EDT up reply actions

No,

If he runs the Tennessee program like USC, you’re going to get the lack of institutional control penalty that Colorado got unless you hide from the NCAA and somehow convince them to not really investigate you.

Somehow SC football seems to be immune from NCAA sanctions, look at Reggie Bush.

Seriously, read the link above. Neuheisel gave a few kids $15.00 more than he was allowed to, over reimbursed kids for mileage traveled by a few dollars to around thirty dollars, put a kid up in a hotel that cost $3.00 more than allowed, let some kids keep some clothing, some recruiting contact and bad paperwork for a private jet.

A jet sounds bad until you read that it was only the paperwork that was a violation. The rest is nickel and dime stuff or just being a little overzealous in recruiting. If I read correctly it was all self reported too.

It’s not good stuff and I’m not apologizing for Rick but it’s not as bad as getting high powered attorneys to stall and delay criminal prosecutions so that SC thugs can continue to play until their college eligibility expires or allowing many players to take money from agents and boosters while they are playing on the team.

Neuheisel did the minor violations, took his discipline and has gone on to show that he has learned his lesson, all while being a pretty good coach.

The one thing you don’t seem to understand is that on this issue, I’m on your side. You deserve better than Kiffin and you don’t deserve to get in any trouble that he creates.

I don’t want you to have a Reggie Bush situation, that’s all I’m saying.

by layout on Sep 14, 2009 2:58 PM EDT up reply actions

Oh, I understand that you're on our side.

I just couldn’t help the rib poke. It’s in my nature. Shoulda included the ;-).

by David Hooper on Sep 14, 2009 3:21 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm getting a little bit tired of all this

from this article:

“This was a serious case in which a football coaching staff, led by the former head football coach, in a calculated attempt to gain a recruiting advantage, pushed beyond the permissible bounds of legislation, resulting in a pattern of recruiting violations,” the committee’s ruling said.

Other alleged violations included letting recruits keep apparel, improper use of private aircraft and excessive compensation to recruits ranging from $3.20 to $36.76.

In addition, I’ve been able to find no information online or elsewhere that Lane Kiffin was involved in the recruitment of Reggie Bush. Most of the vitriol spewed at Kiffin from the left coast seems to derive from the fact that he coached at a school they don’t like, a situation they conveniently forget when referring to their own offensive coordinator.

by danmarcel on Sep 14, 2009 3:24 PM EDT up reply actions

6 down, 44 to go for Kiffin to catch Neuheiselorhoweveryouspellhisname

~~Hey, knucklehead,~~ Um, sir, have you noticed that we are at 6 secondary violations and holding? Haven’t had one since we were baited into it by ESPN’s outstanding and above-board reporting. That’s been how many months?

Ole Miss has five. And, we don’t know if they’ve stopped counting because we never heard about the first five in the national press…

You can read about it here
<ahref=“http://blogs.knoxnews.com/askgriff/2009/06/more_to_ut_violations_story.html” target="new">

by memphispete on Sep 14, 2009 2:37 PM EDT up reply actions

Florida #1, Bama #2, USC #3

Georgia doesn’t move up 3 with the low quality win; Carolina wins over a Big East team on a safety holding call (gimme a break) so they should fall further; UCLA’s offense produced less than TN’s (which is saying something, so they shouldn’t be ranked); Houston we (don’t) have a problem with Ok State – that’s pretty impressive, let down week or not.

I agree that it’s really difficult to get excited about polls when it looks like the only poll we will get near is on Election Day.

by memphispete on Sep 13, 2009 7:30 PM EDT reply actions

That works too.

I’m so incredibly pliable this early in the game, you can talk me into anything. almost

by David Hooper on Sep 13, 2009 8:17 PM EDT up reply actions

Wyoming # 25?

by memphispete on Sep 14, 2009 2:37 PM EDT up reply actions

lol

I won’t go there, even after that AWESOME first half against Texas where they were statistically mauled.

by David Hooper on Sep 14, 2009 3:22 PM EDT up reply actions

13-10 is all the ammunition you need

And you can always point to their current win streak over the SEC….

by memphispete on Sep 14, 2009 5:23 PM EDT up reply actions

Wow.

This is the worst top 25 I’ve seen all year. No kidding. Auburn?? Florida not #1? Michigan I think is a little high. Alabama #3? This is awful.

by Razorback1477 on Sep 13, 2009 11:50 PM EDT reply actions

You're welcome! :-D

by David Hooper on Sep 14, 2009 12:09 AM EDT up reply actions

More seriously,

You should know that I don’t put any stock into early-season polls whatsoever. For one, they tend to bias opinions, as we begin to assume certain teams are of certain levels when they may or may not be.

But that’s why I handle this as a drafting procedure rather than a poll-and-tweak. Expect massive changes, as I take suggestions (usually all of them) and change things around. So if you have a better idea, let me know. I can defend almost all of your questions, but I really don’t have any reason to. I’m changing a few as it is, and I’m happy to change more if you give me some help.

by David Hooper on Sep 14, 2009 12:50 AM EDT up reply actions