Today's rare Sunday tilt provides two wonderful benefits: a chance for SEC fans to cheer for the second 11-1 SEC opening weekend in a row, and a delay in the due date for the BlogPoll (which must now wait until Ole Miss actually finishes their game). This afternoon, if you're so inclined, join me during the Ole Miss game to both comment on what many believe is the most overrated team in the SEC (though Georgia may yet contend for that crown) and to discuss where teams may fall out in the BlogPoll.
In years past, Joel has used a whammadine ranking system with the magic of Excel and historical correlations to rank teams, starting first with heavy overrides of common sense and slowly releasing the system to its own devices by the end of the year. I'm still working through the process for myself, but for now I'd rather stick with human intuition than single-game results for a ranking system. So this week's ballot will be completely free-form and, like the preseason ballot, will be very easily influenced by your input.
I'll continue to listen to input all the way up to submission time (technically Tuesday morning, but I aim to have mine in on Monday evening). Here's the preseason ballot if you want a reminder, but I will place no weight on that ballot. It was all guesswork and we now have at least some information, and unlike the traditional polling services, I have no desire or impulse to defend my preseason prognostications.
A very, very rough first draft of the ballot follows below the jump. This is just to get the ball rolling, so feel free to shred it. It won't hurt my feelings.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | |
| 2 | Texas |
 1 |
| 3 | Southern Cal |
 1 |
| 4 | Alabama |
1 |
| 5 | Penn State |
1 |
| 6 | California |
3 |
| 7 | Oklahoma State |
5 |
| 8 | Mississippi |
2 |
| 9 | Boise State |
9 |
| 10 | Brigham Young |
7 |
| 11 | Oklahoma |
7 |
| 12 | Ohio State |
5 |
| 13 | Georgia Tech |
1 |
| 14 | LSU |
6 |
| 15 | TCU |
1 |
| 16 | North Carolina |
3 |
| 17 | Virginia Tech |
6 |
| 18 | Florida State |
2 |
| 19 | Kansas |
6 |
| 20 | Georgia |
5 |
| 21 | Nebraska |
1 |
| 22 | Oregon State |
2 |
| 23 | Utah |
2 |
| 24 | Tennessee | |
| 25 | Notre Dame | |
| Last week's ballot | ||
And again, this is in no way final. I didn't want to spend an hour working on this when I fully expect to have it changed over considerably. A couple of notes:
- There are a lot of teams thatcould qualify. Week 1 polls are more frustrating than preseason polls this way. Teams like Michigan, Notre Dame, Michigan State, Arkansas, Mississippi State, Boston College, and Air Force could all arguably replace some of the balloted teams right now.
- Navy. Maybe it's a part of my Navy past, but I kinda want to include them for scaring Ohio State the way they did. I think they'll be in the top 25 by the end of the year, so there's no hurry.
- Oregon/Boise. It may seem a bit odd to have Boise jump so much while Oregon is dropped out completely - kinda like I'm double-counting. But I think Boise's win was far bigger than the scoreboard, as Oregon had absolutely zero offense in that game and Boise was slowed only by their own mistakes.
- Tennessee. I'm comfortable including them now, but I don't want to zoom them up too quickly until after UCLA. If they win there, I can foresee happy homer hyper-bumping for UT in the polls.