Over The Pylon

Finally, some of the highest ranked teams are beginning to actually play people. Common opponents are showing up. Preseason expectations give way more so than last week to performance on the field. What has been an arduous process up to this point becomes a little easier. As usual, commentary, suggestions, critique is encouraged and needed, and the final ballot get submitted to the MGoBlog/CBS Sports Poll Monster on Wednesday by 10am. Fire away…

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida	1
2	Alabama	1
3	Virginia Tech	1
4	Texas	1
5	Boise State	—
6	Cincinnati	—
7	TCU	1
8	Southern Cal	1
9	Ohio State	3
10	Nebraska	3
11	Miami (Florida)	1
12	Oklahoma State	1
13	Brigham Young	2
14	Oklahoma	4
15	Kansas	1
16	Iowa	3
17	LSU	10
18	Oregon	2
19	Penn State	2
20	Georgia Tech	4
21	South Florida	2
22	South Carolina	4
23	Pittsburgh	3
24	Notre Dame	2
25	Central Michigan	1
Last week’s ballot

The poll particulars…

• Dropped Out: Auburn (#16), Missouri (#17), Wisconsin (#22), Stanford (#25). All because of losses.
• Florida retakes numero uno because of a strong performance on the road in conference against a Top 10 team. That deserves some credit. Same goes for VT, despite their home game. Alabama is more like 1b instead of 2, but I don’t have that luxury.
• Cincy and Boise stay put, thanks to bye weeks.
• Ohio State and Nebraska move up considerably because of beating other ranked teams. That matters more than beating Florida A&M, hence the Hurricanes move down a spot. Same goes for Oklahoma State.
• LSU stays in the ballot for now, as I don’t think losing to Florida, the #1 team, is anything to drop completely out of the rankings for. They weren’t embarrassed and they still look, to me, like one of the 25 best teams in the country.
• New to the poll is South Carolina, Pitt, Notre Dame, and Central Michigan. A case could be made for more than a few teams here in the bottom 5-10 of the poll, but for now, these 4 are the most impressive to me for various reasons, most notably their one loss records against respectable opponents.
• Central Michigan? Yes… Central Michigan. The Chips, aside from their season opening loss at Arizona, have looked damn good. They’ve blown out the teams they should have, and beat a BCS program in Michigan State.
• I’m more than a little queasy having Georgia Tech move up 4, considering the way they played against Florida State and their seemingly inability to stop anything defensively, but a win is a win, and when they play well they’re a solid team.
• Part of me wanted to leave Mizzou in the poll. I’m torn on them. I would say now they are in the Waiting Room for next week’s poll, along with some familiar faces like Utah, Houston, WVU, and the ones who lost this week like Auburn and Wisconsin.

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