yellow fever here filling in for ragnarok - he's tied up with a job interview today, so he's got other priorities to worry about. Good luck, you dolphin lover you!
I didn't even contribute a ballot last week after the first debacling of our Bears at the hands of the Ducks, but somehow I feel liberated by the USC game last Saturday. You know how that one guy on Ole Miss said he was happy to see their #4 ranking go by the wayside because he was feeling the burden of the hype and now they could just get back to playing football? That's how I feel.
Anyway, here's this week's edition.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | |
| 2 | Boise State | |
| 3 | Texas |
 3 |
| 4 | Florida | |
| 5 | Virginia Tech |
 2 |
Alabama's reign at the top of our poll continues, as we firmly believe that they have a much stronger resume than anyone else you might want to throw out there, in light of the whole transitive property of Miami defeating Oklahoma after Virginia Tech just finished walloping them. Boise State is still sitting pretty at this point with both Avi and ragnarok having them up there at 2 - I had them at 4. There's only so much credit I can give them for beating the Ducks in light of their rather weak schedule since. Meanwhile, Texas being up at 3 is all my fault. I had them at 2 even though I can't name a single team that they've played other than Texas Tech.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Cincinnati |
1 |
| 7 | LSU |
1 |
| 8 | Southern Cal |
1 |
| 9 | Miami (Florida) |
6 |
| 10 | Auburn | |
Cincinnati leads off our bottom half of the top ten, and I've been very impressed with what they've done so far. The Big East as a whole isn't close to the level of quality that was there when West Virginia, Louisville, and Rutgers were all batting in the top 10 every week, but the Tony Pike and Mardy Gilyard have been very impressive. Of course, it seems entirely too inevitable that even if they do finish undefeated they'll get passed over for the BCS title game by a one-loss SEC or Big Ten team, but we can be up in arms about that if/when it happens. Meanwhile, Miami returns to our top ten with their narrow upset of the Sooners.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Ohio State | |
| 12 | Oregon |
4 |
| 13 | TCU |
1 |
| 14 | Iowa | |
| 15 | South Florida |
10 |
CGB North moves up with another impressive performance in the Pac-10 in crushing Washington State - sure, it's only Wazzu, but good teams are supposed to beat inferior teams soundly and that's exactly what they did. It seems to me like this is the region of the poll where things are in something of a holding pattern as we wait for some bigger matchups to take place, and I don't know that anyone really has any idea how good Iowa is at this point because of lingering questions over how impressive Penn State is. South Florida makes a big move up in our rankings after posting a win against Syracuse - not sure why the heck we only had them at 25 last week to begin with.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Stanford | |
| 17 | Wisconsin |
1 |
| 18 | Missouri |
6 |
| 19 | Nebraska | |
| 20 | Georgia Tech | |
Our number 16 team is our rivals down on the Farm, and there's no denying that the Cardinal have certainly played well enough to be ranked this year after a strong performance against the Bruins that has them on top of the Pac-10 standings. Toby Gerhart continues to pile up rushing yards for rags in our college fantasy football league and Andrew Luck looks like he could be the quarterback we wish we had. Wisconsin moves up by winning a Big Ten brawl with the Golden Gophers (maybe they're just not that good either), and Missouri's offensive fireworks show led by Blaine Gabbert finally starts to make a move up our polls.
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Penn State | |
| 22 | Brigham Young | |
| 23 | South Carolina |
3 |
| 24 | Georgia |
3 |
| 25 | Kansas | |
| Last week's ballot | ||
What we have here are teams that we think are good, but haven't quite shown us enough to make us think they're anything more than above average. BYU and Penn State are still slumming it here after not having had an opportunity to make up for lackluster efforts in their two losses, while South Carolina and Georgia slide down our rankings despite relatively impressive performances (even in a loss to #4 LSU in Georgia's case) as victims of our anti-SEC bias. Plus, we just happened to think other teams looked shinier and more awesome last week.