BlogPoll Week 9 Regular Season

Here's my ballot -

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	--
2	Kansas	--
3	Arizona State	--
4	Boston College	--
5	LSU	--
6	West Virginia	--
7	Oregon	2
8	Oklahoma	2
9	Missouri	2
10	Connecticut	7
11	Hawaii	4
12	Boise State	7
13	Virginia Tech	5
14	South Florida	7
15	Georgia	11
16	Wisconsin	10
17	Alabama	5
18	Michigan	5
19	Cincinnati	2
20	Wake Forest	6
21	Clemson	1
22	Texas	8
23	Purdue	3
24	Virginia	8
25	Southern Cal	7

Dropped Out: Florida (#12), Kentucky (#13), Penn State (#24), South Carolina (#25).

More later time permitting.

Update: In regard to my top 5 post below, someone asked how I could rate Kansas so highly based on their soft schedule so far.

The answer – all the undefeated have a relatively soft schedule so far. Take the schedules per the NCAA of the 5 unbeaten teams –

Boston College – 42nd
Ohio State – 56th
Kansas – 63rd
Arizona State – 74th
Hawaii – 119th

One could make equal arguments for that none of these teams deserved to be top ranked based on schedule.

Kansas has however marked 3 solid wins, better than perhaps any of the others. They have –

30-24 Kansas State
19-14 Colorado
19-11 Texas A&M

My quandary in regard to Kansas was whether or not to rank them 1st, ahead of Ohio State. OSU got the edge by having one more win.

I think people are missing how good this Kansas team might just be. They are ranked 11th in total offense (OSU is 38th) and 5th in total defense (OSU is 1st). The defense numbers appear to be real – in the games listed above, they held K State to 15 points below their season average, Colorado to 11 below their average, and Texas A&M to 19 below theirs. Not to mention all three of the above wins were on the road, including the at Colorado game which Oklahoma lost.

With a win over Missouri at home this team will likely compete for a Big 12 title. If they win that (and why not, they beat Colorado who beat Oklahoma), they should be BCS title game bound.

I think they have a better than 50% shot of playing for the mythical national title.