I have given the AP Poll a few weeks to get the kinks out. There should be some semblance of order and logic there. There won't be, but we can always hope.
Just as in the preseason, I will be using the pollstalker at pollspeak.com to evaluate the voters and see all the ballots.
Most Overrated Team: Nebraska (9) – The Cornhuskers has big questions on offense and were really good on defense, at least that was the conventional wisdom. Well, the defense stinks (Washington eviscerated it but couldn't do anything defensively and Fresno St. went up and down the field all game long) and the offense, while strong right now, is just doing what it did against the soft early schedule a year ago. I suspect the Nebraska we have seen so far will not be there all season long and if the defense remains average, the Cornhuskers will lose at least 3 games in Big Ten play.
Most Underrated Team: West Virginia (16) – The Mountaineers have been inconsistent, but they have played some very good football. I expect them to put it all together this week in a huge game against LSU and have a chance to win the game at the end, especially with their spread passing game (a bit different than the spread running games LSU has devoured thus far).
Five craziest votes:
Jeremy Sampson votes TCU 19th and Baylor 20th: There is so much wrong with this its astounding. Later in the season, a case might could be made for this. Now though. Baylor is 2-0 and BEAT TCU. TCU has two wins and it is viable to vote them in the poll, just not in front of Baylor. Get your preseason biases out of here, especially when there are early head-to-head matchups involved.
Dirk Facer votes Arizona St. over Illinois: Really. Some guys make this too easy. Arizona St. lost to Illinois, Saturday. Illinois hasn't lost a game yet. How is this justifiable? Was Arizona St.'s ugly overtime win over Missouri really that powerful a victory? (No)... Moving On
Eight dimwits are still voting for Auburn: Have these guys not watched Auburn play? The defense is wretched by FCS standards, let alone SEC/Top 25 standards. The offense is good, but the big win over Mississippi St. looks quite average right now given what LSU did to the Bulldogs. Also, Utah St. is still Utah St. and Auburn still needed a miracle to pull that game off. Realistically, this team should be 0-3 right now, not getting top 25 votes.
Three Notre Dame voters still exist: To the three of you. I don't care how many yards they have put up. They are a 1-2 team with a crippling turnover problem (seriously, they still turned it over 3 more times in the win over Michigan St.). There is no justifiable reason to vote the Irish in the Top 25 right now. Get back to me when you get above .500
The awfulness that is Craig James: There are so many places to go with this, especially considering James is already the most vilified (seriously) analyst in college football we might have ever seen. With his terrible ballot, we can now see he is unqualified to this too. At least he got his top 4 right. The rest though... Florida St. is still at five, even with an injured quarterback. He thinks Michigan is a top 20 team (you can argue that on resume right now, but there is no way James is a resume voter in the blogging sense of it). His 22-25 teams in order are: TCU (I don't agree but whatever), Mississippi St. (1-2 with losses to awful defense Auburn and an offenseless performance where they looked like they couldn't beat a high school team against LSU), Auburn (you already read my thoughts on them being ranked earlier, but then its compounded by ranking them behind Mississippi St. who they beat and have a better record then) and Notre Dame (mind-numbing stupidity we have here). I could go on but I really don't want to. That this guy has a vote and his shiny analyst position given all the things he has done that are, at the very least, in gray areas (trying to be nice here) is quite sickening, especially considering he is also bad at his job.
Poll trends:
Overreacting early in the season – The conventional wisdom has always been its better to lose early than late. It's a lie. Losing in September is a recipe for poll burial (unless you're TCU for some reason). You fall so far back, there is no making it up. Teams that lose in October don't fall as far, making that the best month to lose in. This season, we have already seen Florida St., Oregon fall from the top 10 in losses to teams ranked in the top 3. Had both of those teams started 6-0 and lost the same games in late October, the punishment would have been a drop to about the 7 spot with still plenty of time to climb back up.
The most important thing is still not losing – Only 3 teams with a loss are currently ranked. All the others, even if they have a decent to good win are somewhere on the outskirts of the poll at best. A case can be made at the very least for Arizona St. (win over Missouri before Illinois loss) and Maryland (win over Miami who then beat Ohio St. before losing to West Virginia). Certainly what those teams have done is more impressive than Arkansas and Virginia Tech (3 cupcake snacks for Arkansas and two plus East Carolina for Virginia Tech).
Non-BCS schools get no love – The only way to get any respect from outside the power conferences is to play in the Mountain West. If you don't have then, forget about the top 25. You can make a good case that what Florida International out of the Sun Belt has done so far is better than much of the rest of the country and better than many ranked teams. They currently have 4 points. Meanwhile, Notre Dame has 8 points and Georgia 7. O Really?
Biggest Poll Games This Week:
8 Texas A&M vs 7 Oklahoma St. - Expect a wild shootout here (and I mean that considering this game has been a wild shootout for about four year running now). The Cowboys can't be stopped for the most part, but their defense is flammable to say the least and Texas A&M has shown an elite level offense.
16 West Virginia vs 2 LSU – LSU has been great defensively in two hyped tests against spread offenses so far. This one comes against a little different form of spread that matches up a bit better. The West Virginia spread passing game has the potential to give LSU headaches meaning Jarrett Lee and the LSU offense will have to finish those drives that ended in field goals against Mississippi St. with touchdowns.
3 Alabama vs 14 Arkansas – We really don't know much about Arkansas. They haven't played anyone. We can say the same about Alabama, at least on defense. The Penn St. offense is that bad, believe me (and if you don't I sentence you to watching all of Penn St.'s offensive plays against Temple, you are allowed to cry afterward) and while I am nearly certain the Alabama defense will be dominant nobody can really be positive quite yet.
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