Blogpollery, Week 8

It's a tale of two polls this week as the top 11 remained relatively static and the bottom half of the JCCW's ballot went through the blender. The end result:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Texas	--
2	Alabama	--
3	Penn State	1
4	Oklahoma State	1
5	Florida	--
6	Southern Cal	--
7	Oklahoma	2
8	Ohio State	2
9	Georgia	2
10	Utah	1
11	Boise State	1
12	LSU	3
13	Pittsburgh	7
14	Texas Tech	2
15	Georgia Tech	11
16	TCU	10
17	Boston College	9
18	South Florida	3
19	Ball State	4
20	Tulsa	6
21	Minnesota	5
22	Northwestern	4
23	Virginia Tech	15
24	Michigan State	5
25	Maryland	1

Dropped Out: California (#13), Missouri (#14), North Carolina (#17), Wake Forest (#18), Brigham Young (#22), Vanderbilt (#24), Kansas (#25).

1-4: Nos. 1 and 2 stay put. There's a wider gap between the 'Horns and Tide after Saturday, but don't tell me it's time to move Penn St. up just yet--there's still nothing within even shouting distance of "@ Georgia" in the Nits' win pile. They did leapfrog Oklahoma St., though, after the Pokes' big win over Missouri took some serious devaluation.

It wasn't so much, though, that last week's point about Okie St.'s position vis a vis their in-state rival no longer stands. I may have underestimated the Sooners' resume a bit (as Brian pointed out) but even after the enhancement of Oklahoma's TCU scalp, one of these teams has a loss and the other doesn't. Plus, if you'd like to play comparative scoring, Oklahoma beat Baylor 49-17 while the Cowboys beat the Bears 34-6 Saturday. Not a lot of difference there.

5-9: Choosing between Florida and Southern Cal is splitting hairs; they both have a big, decisive home win against a fellow top-15 team, a semi-questionable loss, and some good-looking if hardly substantial secondary wins. I think Florida's just better, so they go fifth. Oklahoma scoots up with the Kansas win and the appreciation in the TCU victory's value, but they still have nothing like the Trojans or Gators' Ohio St./LSU triumphs.

Speaking of the Buckeyes, their bludgeoning of Michigan St. bumps them into the one-loss upper echelon and ahead of the Dawgs, who don't really have anything to apologize for but also just don't have the signature win the teams ahead of them do.

10-11, 14: Utah still has upward mobility with TCU and BYU left on the schedule, but this might already be Boise's high-water mark: unless Oregon puts things together, Nevada and Fresno aren't going to give the Broncos enough of a boost to stay with the resumes put together by BCS-level teams. As for Texas Tech, the Red Raiders finally play an opponent with a pulse when they travel to Lawrence next Saturday; there's no reason to have them higher than this until they win there. Which, personally, I doubt they do.

12-13, 15-18: The second wave of BCS one-loss teams, headed up by an LSU team whose only loss was on the road at Florida and who just came away with a tough win in Columbia over what might be the SEC's fifth-best team. Pitt will probably wind up the most underrated team in this week's poll; they now have a very good win at South Florida and two decent W's in Iowa and Navy with which to back it up. South Florida doesn't have a bad loss, but at the moment they don't have an especially impressive win either. Voters who vote USF ahead of Pitt--who has both the better overall resume and, of course, the head-to-head win over the Bulls--just aren't doing their job.

Georgia Tech finally moves into the poll with their win at BC getting a big boost and TCU falls in right behind them for obvious reasons.

19-20: Ball needed Navy to pull the upset over Pitt if they wanted any real traction in the polls. Tulsa makes up for their near-miss against SMU the previous week by putting up simply ungodly numbers against UTEP.

21-22: Best thing Minnesota and Northwestern have going for them are the lack of a second loss, since their best wins--Illinois and Iowa, respectively--aren't anything to write home about. Gophers rank higher by virtue of better best win and a more understandable loss.

23-25: Close, close decision here between two-loss filler Virginia Tech, Michigan St., Maryland, and Missouri. The former three all have two better wins than the late, lamented Tigers, but the two teams Mizzou's suffered defeat at the hands of are Nos. 1 and 4 in this poll. In the end, though, I decided that who you beat was more important than who you lost to, even if those teams are--in the case of Maryland--Middle Tennessee State and Virginia.

Waiting list: Florida St. and Cincinnati get nods for lasting this long with a single loss, but neither has either the quality wins or the requisite margin of victory over the tomato cans on their schedule to merit inclusion just yet. FSU still has yet to leap Wake Forest in the pecking order, actually, since the Deacs have two wins in Ole Miss and Florida St. that are better than anything the 'Noles have to offer.