BlogPoll draft: week 14

by Joel Hollingsworth on Nov 28, 2007 11:24 PM EST

It's looking like Brian's hosting service is still having some server issues, so I don't have the alphas, but here's what I scraped together this evening:

Missouri. Wins over Illinois, Texas Tech, and Kansas. Opportunity to avenge its only loss, to Oklahoma, this week.
West Virginia. One loss, to South Florida, and wins over, well, not much, to be honest, unless you count Cincinnati and Connecticut.
Kansas. Okay, I know they haven't really played anybody but Missouri, and they lost to them, but compare them to the others further down the list.
Ohio State. One loss, to Illinois, who was unranked at the time. Wins over who? Wisconsin, okay, but Michigan? Penn State? Does that make them better than Kansas?
LSU. The best of the two-loss teams. Losses to Kentucky and Arkansas, both unranked now, but both triple overtimes. Wins over Virginia Tech, Florida, and Auburn, not to mention South Carolina and Alabama.
USC. One loss to a ranked-Oregon, and one major upset at home to Stanford, which is worse than two triple-OT losses to unranked opponents, both of which were at least at one time ranked.
Virginia Tech. Two losses, but both to ranked teams, one of them LSU, so they stay below them. Plus, their wins, with the exception of Clemson and Virginia, are nothing extra special.
Arizona State. Two losses, both to ranked teams (Oregon and USC). Wins over Cal and UCLA nothing to really crow about.
Oklahoma. This is a tough one. Both of their losses are to unranked teams, but they've given Missouri their only loss, and they beat Texas.
Georgia. Does everybody have Georgia waaaay over-ranked, or is it the orange talking? Their two losses are to South Carolina, who fell apart toward the latter part of the season, and Tennessee, who everybody's saying isn't really all that good. Okay, so they beat Florida. It's pretty easy to read too much into that.
Boston College. They beat the Hokies, but only barely, and they then lost to two unranked teams on successive weeks.
Hawaii. You know, I think there's a case to be made for Hawaii being ranked as high as, say, number four. No, they haven't played anybody but Boise State, but they beat them, and they beat the rest of the unwashed opponents on their schedule, which is more than everybody from Ohio State on down can say. You can't wag your finger at somebody for "not playing anybody" when you don't beat the nobodies on your own schedule. Still, there are degrees of "nobody-ness," and all we really know about Hawaii is that they are better than Boise State.
Boise State
Brigham Young
Florida
Tennessee. Look, Tennessee's representing the East in the SEC championship game. Georgia and Florida are not. It's somewhat odd that the Vols are ranked below both the Bulldogs and the Gators, but our victory over them is negated by one more loss, and Florida's extra SEC loss came from having to play the two toughest teams from the West, and it's pretty hard to shake 59-20 from your mind. If we somehow pull off the upset over LSU, I'll have Tennessee about every other SEC team regardless of anything else.
Illinois
Clemson
Wisconsin
Texas
Oregon
Cincinnati
Virginia
Connecticut
South Florida

So what do y'all think?

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Reasonable

You will naturally get disagreements, particularly with teams like Georgia, Hawaii, and Boise State. But it's more a matter of how you determine your rankings than how well you apply your system.

Georgia Georgia played very, very good ball at the end of the season. Unfortunately, they were rather flat at the beginning. Most people tend to weight the end more heavily because that's what is freshest in their minds. So, most people will dismiss Georgia's early flatness to rank them higher. That's fine with me - a high SEC team is good overall for the conference.
Hawaii Hawaii is the one school that is most damaged by the inherent design ranking system. They have great trouble filling their schedule with teams, and barely even had 12 opponents this year due to late cancellations. To compensate for the expense of flying to Hawaii, teams are allowed a 13th game in the schedule. Most don't take it because of the need to rest and heal players, but the option is there. Likewise, Hawaii can't afford to schedule many road games, particularly outside their conference. The result is that they end up with a bunch of low-end opponents at home who see it as an opportunity to take their kids to Hawaii for a weekend of fun, regardless of the outcome of the game. Hawaii could one day be unquestionably the best team in the nation, and they'll get no higher than about 10th because of their schedule. They have absolutely no chance at a title game because the system doesn't account for their situation.
Boise State Because Hawaii has been the conference headliner, and Hawaii's strength of schedule is so low, the effect carries over to Boise. Regardless of their skill, Boise is tied to Hawaii in people's minds. Having said that, Boise doesn't deserve a top 10 ranking anyhow, but it does cause for some disagreement on Boise.
Tennessee You'll see a lot of disagreement with Tennessee. They followed Georgia's path of a poor opening followed by a strong ending. Working against Tennessee is that the opening was so poor that it remains the freshest image in people's minds, and the late season games are seen through that filter. It doesn't help matters much that the losses were marquis national games. Those who vote the whole body of work will vote higher than those who vote the strongest impression, which is oddly backwards of Georgia. Still, it's a moot point if they win.
LSU Only somewhat related to rankings - if UT wins and LSU stays ahead of Florida in the rankings (e.g. a close game), then LSU should go to the Capital One Bowl. The kicker is that Michigan is most likely to go there too, since OSU and Illinois will probably both get BCS slots. We can only hope. That would put Florida in the Outback bowl, Arkansas in the Cotton, and Auburn in the Chik-Fil-A bowl.
BYU Daring ranking here. Again, it's a ranking system issue, and this is a team that will cause a lot of divergence. They've had a very solid year, so this makes a lot of sense for your ranking system.

by David Hooper on Nov 29, 2007 10:09 AM EST reply actions

If you really felt like it (hint, hint), you could use your ballot for the animated blogpoll. Either that, or you could get a ballot from Double Extra Point. His ballots are effectively the same as the blogpoll anyway, so it should work out just fine.

(If you can't tell, I'm addicted to the animated blogpoll. Fortunately, I'm ok with that and I don't want to stop at anytime.)

by David Hooper on Nov 29, 2007 3:00 PM EST reply actions