CGB Blogpoll Ballot, Week 5 (Final)

1) Their gigantic win over UW looks better after Washington beat Stanford

2) Pretty much everybody else has had sloppy wins over iffy teams. Georgia just barely beat Tennessee, South Carolina fell behind against Kentucky, and West Virginia just allowed 63 points. So far, everybody outside of Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Kansas State have shown flaws, however minor. The 5th slot was tough for me to pick.

ragnarok: Yeah, I was only able to drop LSU to #6, and that took putting Notre Dame in the top 5, which still feels weird. After years of them being overrated by everyone, I just expect that trend to continue.

atomsareenough: Yeah, like I said, I dinged a few teams, including South Carolina. But Tennessee was flirting with the rankings within the past couple of weeks, and played Florida pretty well. I have Baylor ranked as well. So I withheld judgment on the Bulldogs and Mountaineers this week.

I'm quite suspicious of both Washington and Stanford. I don't think they're very good. One more questionable performance from the Cardinal and I'm going to kick them out of my poll entirely.

Did anyone notice, BTW, that David Ash has turned into a pretty good QB over at Texas? They seem to have an offense this year. Makes me feel slightly less bad about the Holiday Bowl.

ragnarok: I don't feel like our pass defense was the real problem in the Holiday Bowl, and the only thing that's making me feel less bad about Cal football right now is that I can pay attention to the Oakland Athletics into October this year instead.

atomsareenough: Wow, I didn't realize you guys had all ranked Washington. I'm going to wait until next week to see if they're legit. I'm expecting an Oregon massacre. I think they'll probably lose to USC as well the week after.

norcalnick: What to do with Stanford, USC and Washington? For my money, there is currently no way to justify putting Stanford behind USC considering how the Trojans looked against Stanford and the fact that USC hasn't really beaten a good team this year. But by extension, do you need to put Washington ahead of Stanford? For now I'm going with no, because UW's blow-out loss to an increasingly iffy looking LSU acts as a tie-breaker.

Ohio Bear: I didn't really know what to do with USC/Stanford/Washington either. As bad as Stanford looked on offense vs. Washington, I gave them the edge over USC for now. As for West Virginia, I have them in the top 10, but I didn't really feel all that good about it. Yeah, Geno Smith is great and their offense looks like a juggernaut. But they gave up 63 points. It's hard for me to think that a top-10 caliber team would give up 63 points to a good (but not great) Baylor team.

atomsareenough: The only team from last week to fall out was Michigan State, because I had them at #25 and they lost, though it was a close game to a highly ranked team in Ohio State. I think they're good so I'll keep an eye on them and probably bring them back next week. For now I replaced them in the poll with UCLA more due to lack of any better candidates. I kept Stanford in at #24 but will give them lots of scrutiny going forward due to the loss to the Huskies and the San Jose State game, though those Spartans are looking not too shabby so far either. I also kept Baylor in the poll despite the loss, due to the offensive fireworks and the fact that they hung with #10 (now #7) West Virginia, and it's the Bears' first loss. They're at my wildcard #25 spot.