Over The Pylon

All season long, OTP has been honored to participate in the weekly CBSSports/MGoBlog Blogpoll. It’s roughly the best and brightest 100 or so college football blogs on the net. To be included in that group is quite the honor.

This week is the final ballot we’ll submit until after the Bowls have all played out. And this week, unlike any other, we have as much empirical evidence of a team’s quality and stature as we’re going to get. The conference champions have been decided, the major can’t miss games of 2009 have been played, and all that’s left is 35 games until college football is put in storage for the better part of 7 months.

This weekend saw upsets, near upsets, close games, and thrashings, but perhaps more so than any other weekend, the games were spread far enough around through the day that the dedicated souls who wanted to could football their asses off for around 14 hours. And yes… we did.

What have we learned? We’ve learned that 14 weeks of a season and a 3-year legacy can go for naught should you lose to Alabama in the SEC Championship game. We learned that Mack Brown at Texas is either the game’s riskiest clock manager or its most insane. We learned that Cincinnati, as good teams often do, finds a way to win games it has no business winning, while we confirmed that Pittsburgh almost always disappears in high importance situations. We learned that Paul Johnson’s option attack is unstoppable when executed correctly, and Georgia Tech is indeed for real.

All of this made this week’s Blogpoll more than a simple attempt at logic or a haphazard collection of loosely connected thoughts or ideas. There are facts. There are game results. There’s our impression of each of these teams gained from 14 straight Saturday’s spent parked in front of a television. And some Thursdays. And a few Fridays. Maybe a couple Wednesdays. With the occasional Tuesday.

Dropped Out This Week:
Houston (#19)
Clemson (#24)
Northwestern (#25)

We disregarded where we had teams ranked last week, and focused considerably on what these teams have done this season as a whole. Hence, the large amounts of swing, etc. which will probably win us some award from Brian the Blogpoll czar for being manic-depressive and flying off the handle.

Some random thoughts: Florida stays in the Top 6, if for only because I believe that they are clearly one of the best teams in the country. Did they perform on Saturday against Alabama? No. But I’m of the opinion that that had significantly more to do with the Crimson Tide than the Gators. Penn State drops a bit more so because of teams underneath them like Georgia Tech jumping them. Iowa jumped considerably as well, namely because we had punished them a bit unjustly in the last several polls. Feel differently? Let us know.

Pitt and Oregon State stay in the poll if only because of who they lost to. The same cannot be said for those that were bounced. Per usual, comments and such should you feel the need to voice some discontent over where we have a team ranked, a team we don’t have ranked at all, or really anything else for that matter.

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