Friday, January 9, 2009

Final Blogpoll ballot.

RankTeamDelta
1 Florida 1
2 Texas 1
3 Southern Cal 3
4 Utah 4
5 Oklahoma 2
6 Alabama 2
7 Penn State --
8 TCU 8
9 Ohio State --
10 Oregon 4
11 Texas Tech 6
12 Boise State 2
13 Georgia 2
14 Mississippi 8
15 Virginia Tech 10
16 Oklahoma State 5
17 Oregon State 9
18 Iowa 8
19 Missouri 1
20 Florida State 4
21 Cincinnati 8
22 West Virginia 4
23 Michigan State 6
24 Georgia Tech 12
25 LSU 1

Dropped Out: Boston College (#19), Pittsburgh (#20), Northwestern (#21), Brigham Young (#23).

I'm all over the map on the lower end of the poll, which means I'm probably overvaluing bowl games. Oh well, does anyone care about anything but the top five at this point? If Oklahoma had won last night, I probably would have ranked Texas #1. As it stands, Florida's SEC championship game win over Alabama and last night's win, comparable to Texas's best win, gives the Gators the best resume.

I respect what Utah did, and if they had scheduled (and beat) the Michigan program they thought they were scheduling, I might have given them a look. But they played only three teams from the Sagarin top 30, and two of those were non-BCS conference programs. I have a hard time imagining that Utah could have navigated the gauntlet Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Missouri, and Texas Tech with the 3-1 record that Texas managed, let alone 4-0. Ditto the SEC schedule of Florida. Every team ranked ahead of Utah has a top 16 schedule per Sagarin. Utah is #56. Sorry, guys. Maybe you and BYU can talk the Pac-10 into becoming the Pac-12. Until then, it will take a special confluence of circumstances for a non-BCS program to become a national champion (of course, I'm so averse to the idea of a 2-loss champion that I probably would have voted Utah over LSU last year, assuming the Utes wouldn't have played in the championship game under that scenario).

No comments: