No SEC Power Poll balloting this week (for obvious “are there any changes to make? No, no there are not” reasons), but here’s the WBE BlogPoll ballot:
 |
||
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | |
| 2 | TCU | |
| 3 | Cincinnati |  2 |
| 4 | Texas | |
| 5 | Boise State | 1 |
| 6 | Oregon | 1 |
| 7 | Florida |  4 |
| 8 | Ohio State | |
| 9 | Georgia Tech | 1 |
| 10 | Iowa | 1 |
| 11 | Virginia Tech | |
| 12 | Miami (Florida) | 3 |
| 13 | LSU | |
| 14 | Arizona | |
| 15 | Stanford | 2 |
| 16 | Penn State | 3 |
| 17 | West Virginia | 8 |
| 18 | Oregon State | 6 |
| 19 | Pittsburgh | 1 |
| 20 | Southern Cal | 6 |
| 21 | California | 5 |
| 22 | Brigham Young | |
| 23 | Oklahoma State | |
| 24 | Nebraska | 4 |
| 25 | Wisconsin | 1 |
| Last week’s ballot | ||
Dropped Out: Houston (#21).
The usual set of notes:
– I hate this Texas team. Hate. Fraudiest bunch of frauds that ever frauded. More on this later today.
– Yeah, Oregon ahead of Florida. Winning the Pac-10 (maybe the best conference in the country this year … yeah, I said it) is worth more than finishing runner-up in the SEC, especially when said runner-up has a road win over LSU and almost precious little else to really hang its hat on.
– Flying leap for Arizona from out of the poll to No. 14, but a road win at USC is still nothing to sneeze at–Trojans’ resume is still easily top-25 caliber, even if they’re not playing like it at the moment. Head-to-head nudges them ahead of Stanford.
– The Pac-10 is kind of a mess: five different 8-4 teams behind Oregon. Put the 6-3 in league play teams ahead of the 5-4 ones, they tried to pay attention to head-to-head from there.
– Miami moving up is pure correction.
– Thought about including Central Michigan, but the fact that they weren’t even competitive at a Boston College team that’s not really anywhere near the top 25 really hurts them.
Jerry, I can’t believe you would even say the Pac-10 is “maybe the best conference in the country this year”!
They’re FAR AND AWAY the best conference in the country this year.
What do you think about the BCS pitting TCU and Boise against each other? I think it’s a complete wimp-out, they didn’t want to risk seeing two BCS conference schools go down at the hands of non-BCS conference schools. It also ensures a maximum of three undefeated teams at the end of the season. What a joke.
The problem J.D. is that there weren’t enough high-quality BCS-conference teams to go around. There was only one Florida–the other two candidates were Georgia Tech and Iowa, and how exciting would it really have been to see TCU or Boise play those guys? I’d rather have the mid-major celebration in the desert and ensure that TCU gets the maximum possible argument for their share of the title. (Which no one will argue but me, but still.)
As for the Pac-10, yeah, it’s probably better than the SEC. But after the South Carolina/Georgia wins the final week of the season, I want to see what happens in the bowls before making any final judgments.
I agree, J.D. TCU/Boise matched up against Cincy/UF in no particular order would be appointment viewing in my book.
The BCS just gave the mid majors the separate-but-equal treatment — they got their very own BCS bowl where they can’t spoil the anything for the more important teams. Just to make a point, TCU and Boise should charter twice the buses they need for their rides to the stadium and leave the front half of each one vacant.
WBE, I’d say undefeated Cincy from the BigE qualifies. Beating another mid-major (although an undefeated one) gives the TCU/BSU winner no chance to prove anything.
Sorry for all the segregation analogies, but this sure looks like they are being kept out of the good restaurant.
I agree with the TCU-Boise State cop-out assessment.
And I’m not sure if this was intentional on your part but I’d love to watch the 4 bowl games that pit your top 8 teams against each other in order (1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4, etc.) – including the rematch of Boise and Oregon.
Shame there are no SEC-Pac10 bowl matchups…
The other problem, WBE, is that the sample size of legitimate OOC games in a college football season isn’t big enough to be statistically significant. I’ll agree that UGA’s and SC’s wins two weekends ago helped our cause, but because of the aforementioned sample size problems, it’s tough to make a reasonable argument without at least partially using the “look test,” i.e. they LOOK like the better team.
I also agree that the bowl results will tell us a TON about the relative strength of each conference.
I agree with Alex re: splitting up UF and Cincy for TCU and Boise. I’ve been drooling over a TCU-Cincinnati bowl game (I kinda wanted it for the BCSNC game) for about a month and a half. That would be one hell of a game. Boise and Florida would be interesting too, methinks, although I’d have to imagine the Broncos would be run out of the building.
I dunno, I see Cincy as basically just another usurper a la TCU or Boise. They’d never even finished the season in the polls until Kelly arrived and if the Big East is clearly a stronger league top-to-bottom than the MWC or WAC, Cincy still doesn’t have that marquee win that BSU does in Oregon or TCU does in their Utah/BYU curb-stompings. After the close calls vs. UConn, WVU, and Pitt, I’d expect TCU or BSU to have been favorites against the Bearcats … and isn’t the whole point to give them a game in which they’re the underdogs?
Is it me, or is the entire NCAA rebuilding this year?
Jerry,
Either the BigE is a BCS league or not. If it’s weaker than the MWC or WAC then one of them should replace the BE in the BCS and get the automatic bid.