BlogPoller Disorder: And.... We're Done

by CornFromAJar on Dec 4, 2007 10:04 PM EST

Crap, man, the season's over. Oh sure, the bowl games, and we're all fired up about that Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl... seriously, is that that much of a competitive market for helicopters out there that the good people at Bell thought sponsoring a third-tier bowl game would drive business their way?

Anywho, the final regular-season BlogPoll Ballot:

Rank	Team
1	Oklahoma
2	LSU
3	Ohio State
4	Missouri
5	Virginia Tech
6	Southern Cal
7	Kansas
8	Arizona State
9	Georgia
10	Florida
11	Boston College
12	West Virginia
13	Illinois
14	Tennessee
15	Hawaii
16	Clemson
17	Connecticut
18	Wake Forest
19	South Florida
20	Brigham Young
21	Texas
22	Kentucky
23	Wisconsin
24	Oregon
25	Auburn

Dropped Out: Boise State (#13), Cincinnati (#22), Virginia (#23).

I suppose the biggest thing there is that I really like Oklahoma. I realize putting the Sooners in a MNC game against LSU gives you two 2-loss teams going for the title, but I like Oklahoma's wins over a pretty good Mizzou better than anything tOSU did, and OKU's losses be darned.

Any other discrepancies can be blamed, as usual, on the difference between what Joel thinks and what I think (the delta thing is all out of whack, I guess due to the server problems Brian had last week).

Thoughts? Ramblings? Pitchforks?

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Comments

Can't say that any complaints

would make sense this year.

After the way things have gone, you could put Wofford at #1 and I'd probably believe it. I don't mind Oklahoma at #1, especially because you placed OSU out of the MNC. My biggest soapbox in the final rankings is that OSU has no business at the top; their OOC schedule was laughable, their conference was weak this year, and the one-loss argument carries no weight this year. If only one loss meant anything, then Kansas would be higher, and Hawaii would be smoking hot. (BTW, depending on whose numbers you believe, Hawaii's SoS is in the same ballpark as OSU's. The only true differences between them is name recognition and the strength of schedule of their opponents.) Well, enough OSU bashing. It's a season of cheer, so I'll move on and drop the issue.

I'm a little surprised you hung onto Oregon in the top 25. They went from good to mediocre in the snap of a leg.

Your final top 25 tally (top 10 tally in parentheses):

4 ACC teams (1)
3 Big 10 teams (1)
4 Big 12 teams (3)
3 Big East teams (0)
1 MWC team (0)
3 PAC 10 teams (2)
6 SEC teams (3)
1 WAC team (0)
0 Independents
0 C-USA
0 Sun Belt
0 MAC

Oddly enough, that's pretty close to the normal distribution for any given year, though the top 10 are skewed toward the SEC and Big 12 more than normal. My happiest moment is seeing that big goose-egg for the Independents, even if that means that Navy is unranked.

Thanks to both of you for the ballots. It's always fun to see somebody else's opinion, and the bipolar ballot is a thing of beauty.

by David Hooper on Dec 4, 2007 11:50 PM EST reply actions

And in today's lesson,

I learn that the comment-typing window uses a monospaced font, while the comment section uses a proportional font. Next time I won't worry so much about trying to align my text. ;)

by David Hooper on Dec 4, 2007 11:53 PM EST up reply actions

I agree.

Sure Oklahoma has 2 losses but one was up in Boulder, a very tough place to play with a freshman quaterback. And then lost at Texas Tech with the said freshman quarterback injured in the first quarter. I like their wins over Texas and 2 win over Mizzou better than any of tOSU's wins this year. Furthermore, it's not Oklahoma's fault Miami was terrible this year, at least they had a traditional powerhouse on their schedule and played against a good Tulsa team at Tulsa.

I believe it was Lee Corso who said that all tOSU was this year was the State Champion of Ohio with wins over Kent State, Youngstown State, and Akron (all of which were in the Horseshoe). I would just prefer to see a NCG with two teams with comprable athletes on the field. They're a good team, but not worthy of another shot at a national title, even if that's not really realistic. Over on College Football News, they note how tOSU could play there best game and still lose by 20 because LSU will just be getting healthy and have all of their weapons at their disposal. I think we all know the formula from last year...

S-speed
E-equals
C-championships

Proud member of the EBMCC (Eric Berry Man Crush Club) and Josh McNeil's Videographer

by Volorado on Dec 5, 2007 9:59 AM EST reply actions

Boy, I hope so

I'm no fan of LSU (not even in the generic SEC-first sense), but I can't imagine how horrid it would be to have to deal with OSU fans should they win that game. The real kicker about football is that with only one game to play, the underdog has a much better shot than in a series of games. So, even though LSU is clearly the better team, OSU will have a better than expected chance just due to the random elements. If they win, OSU fans will crow about how good their team is, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Furthermore, OSU hot streaks are typically accompanied by a small number of people on the UT campus wearing OSU gear for days on end. (OSU has a reputation among college students as a hip party scene type place with academics just good enough to not be ashamed of: search the web for OSU college clips at your own risk.)

Tressel is a good coach, and I'm not digging at him, but there are much better teams out there. Honestly, I'd like to see OSU play VTech, but that would never have happened. Even if OSU wasn't in the game, they'd have the Rose Bowl tie-in.

Now that I'm on the subject, here's the no-title-implications games I wish we had among the 10 BCS teams (though I'll replace Kansas with Missorui - they got jobbed):

LSU - Oklahoma
VTech - Ohio State
Missouri - West Virginia
USC - Georgia
Hawaii - Illinois

Though I suppose there's probably a good reason they don't ask me these things.

by David Hooper on Dec 5, 2007 10:16 AM EST up reply actions

Matchups

Those are great, that is how it's supposed to be. That's what fans want to watch, great teams playing great games against each other. People bash the BCS for obvious reasons, but they forget that it's the bowls that pick the teams they want. So in the case of the Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl, they messed up. How in the world could the Rose Bowl pick Illinois over Georgia to play USC? They must keep... TRADITION! As for the Orange Bowl picking Kansas over Mizzou, well, that's just dumb. But your matchups are great...

LSU-OU.... Probably the most talented and deserving teams.

VaTech-tOSU.... Great defense and special teams and would certainly be a close game.

Mizzou-West Virginia.... Exact opposite of VaTech-tOSU, tons of points.

USC-UGA.... The 2 hottest teams in the country and both have great balance.

Hawaii-Illinois.... Pass Happy vs. the Spread Option, great contrasting styles and certainly an entertaining game.

But what do we know, we're just the ones that buy the tickets, t-shirts, and tv's to watch the games and bring in all of that ad revenue, right?

Proud member of the EBMCC (Eric Berry Man Crush Club) and Josh McNeil's Videographer

by Volorado on Dec 5, 2007 11:06 AM EST up reply actions