The California Golden Blogs Ballot - Week 2
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 3 | Boise St. Broncos | -- |
| 4 | Wisconsin Badgers | -- |
| 5 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 6 | Stanford Cardinal | -- |
| 7 | Texas A&M Aggies | -- |
| 8 | Oregon Ducks | -- |
| 9 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 10 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -- |
| 11 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -- |
| 12 | Virginia Tech Hokies | -- |
| 13 | South Florida Bulls | -- |
| 14 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 15 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs | -- |
| 16 | Baylor Bears | -- |
| 17 | Arkansas Razorbacks | -- |
| 18 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | -- |
| 19 | Missouri Tigers | -- |
| 20 | West Virginia Mountaineers | -- |
| 21 | Michigan St. Spartans | -- |
| 22 | USC Trojans | -- |
| 23 | Houston Cougars | -- |
| 24 | Florida Gators | -- |
| 25 | Texas Longhorns | -- |
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
LSU is our unanimous #1 this week, for fairly obvious reasons. Lots of disagreement after that, though. Thoughts and justifications after the jump.
ragnarok: For my own part, I refused to vote for any team that played a I-AA school last week. Sorry, but beating up on schools like Richmond or Sacramento State just doesn't justify a ranking at this point. After that, I sorta fell into resume ranking (welcome Baylor! welcome Houston! welcome South Florida!), but not really, as resume ranking doesn't actually make sense since there's no way to know how good the opponents they beat really were yet.
Yellow Fever: It's hard to read too much into what happens during a single game on week 1, but then it also seems odd to place too much weight on preseason polls which aren't based on any games at all. So in general I pushed up those teams that beat teams that played and beat reasonably competitive teams, and punished those that performed worse than they seemingly should have. USC, I'm looking at you.
Norcalnick: I'm not a big fan of incrementalism, but when 80% of the country plays meaningless opponents there's just not much out there to justify many changes. A bunch of teams rose a couple spots because I kicked Utah and TCU out of the poll for obvious reasons.
Berkelium97: I would have dropped USC and Utah out of the rankings altogether, but there is absolutely no one to replace them. I’m still not convinced that ASU is worth ranking. We’ll see how they handle Missouri next week. No one after 15 in my rankings deserves to be ranked at this point in the season.
I’m incorporating power rankings into this week’s rankings. LSU and Boise State move up to 1st and 2nd for playing teams that actually have a pulse.
Norcalnick: Big jumps for South Florida, Baylor, LSU and Boise St. for beating opponents with a pulse. Meanwhile, a small fall for Oregon because I'm for rewarding teams that schedule tough opponents, and because they didn't play nearly as poorly as the scoreline suggests.
ragnarok: Any other thoughts?
Berkelium97: The Russell Wilson experiment could very well guide Wisconsin back into the Rose Bowl. If they get past Nebraska, they could be a dark horse national championship contender.
I’m reluctant to move Stanford up too far (I had them around 15th last week). Sure, they dominated San Jose State, but the Spartans are one of the worst teams in D-1A football. Their only bright spot last season was QB play and their QB coach is now with our Bears. Look for SJSU on ESPN’s bottom ten all season.
Norcalnick: If I were a true resume ranker this early in the season I might actually consider Cal. But since I continue to believe that resume ranking is impossible until the 4th or 5th week, I've avoided that type of bad juju for now.
ragnarok: I understand what you're saying, as Fresno State might have been one of the top 25 teams that lost last week. Having scrutinized the Cal game much more than any other last weekend, though, I couldn't even squeak them onto the end of my ballot.
Berkelium97: I’m really looking forward to next week, when ranked teams start playing teams I’ve actually heard of instead of cupcakes like Pradesh A&M.