Here is our rough cut for the week 1 ballot. It's due Wednesday morning, but we have all night to hash this thing out and make something that's not totally humiliating to Rocky Top Talk. Maybe.
Rocky Top Talk Ballot - Week 2
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boise St. Broncos |
 1 |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide |
 -1 |
| 3 | Texas Longhorns |
1 |
| 4 | TCU Horned Frogs |
2 |
| 5 | Ohio St. Buckeyes |
-2 |
| 6 | Oregon Ducks |
4 |
| 7 | Nebraska Cornhuskers |
12 |
| 8 | Iowa Hawkeyes |
1 |
| 9 | Wisconsin Badgers | -- |
| 10 | Miami Hurricanes |
7 |
| 11 | Virginia Tech Hokies |
-4 |
| 12 | Oklahoma Sooners |
-4 |
| 13 | Penn St. Nittany Lions |
11 |
| 14 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs | -- |
| 15 | Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets |
-2 |
| 16 | Georgia Bulldogs |
-2 |
| 17 | Florida St. Seminoles |
-2 |
| 18 | Arkansas Razorbacks |
7 |
| 19 | Utah Utes |
-3 |
| 20 | Auburn Tigers |
-8 |
| 21 | Arizona Wildcats | -- |
| 22 | West Virginia Mountaineers | -- |
| 23 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 24 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -- |
| 25 | Michigan Wolverines | -- |
| Dropouts: Florida Gators, USC Trojans, Pittsburgh Panthers, Stanford Cardinal, Washington Huskies, Cincinnati Bearcats, Clemson Tigers | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
The logic, such as it may be, is thus:
Who's Number 1?
Take any of the top six, and I'd be fine calling them #1. Boise State had the toughest matchup, so I gave it to them. I don't know how to put Texas and TCU, so I basically flipped a coin in my head on that one.
Trogans!
Left 'em off. For one, they would have been pretty low as is it is (hey, it's not like they could defend a high ranking, right?). But for two, they're irrelevant to postseason conversation, so it's a little more useful to rank teams that can go bowling.
Virginia Tech
A very tough game against a very good team, and you could argue that they could/should have won. They don't drop much. I felt that just outside the top 10 was alright for now, but since there's nobody else that's really top 10 material, Miami won the lucky lottery.
Florida
Dropped out. They can boomerang right back into the top 10 (where their talent would have them) once they demonstrate the basic things that were lacking last week. But it's early and our only data for them is (a) that they have a lot of talent and (b) that they have no offense.
Basically everybody after Virginia Tech
If you have a better way to sort them, I'm all ears. Seriously, this week told us nothing for about 60% of all teams.
Computer Rankings
Thanks to (a) the Monday games and (b) Sagarin's online rankings data going completely wonky (everybody scores zero!), the computer rankings are kaput for the week. That's fine, so long as it gets fixed within the next two to three weeks. I'll start adding those in once we have 'em.
Slingshotting! Whee!
A statistics lesson: when you have only 1 data point, your variance is 100%. All we know is that some teams should probably go somewhere this-a-way (points up), and others that-a-way (points down-ish). But please: discuss, correct, and let's get something that looks kinda sorta like a ballot.