Monday Pollin’

First of all I made a mistake in my BlogPoll last week, which I unfortunately didn’t have time to post before it went final. As BlogPoll maestro Brian pointed out, I had Ohio State ranked 9 spots ahead of USC last week, which was odd considering the Trojans won at OSU, and they had the same W-L record. My mistake was ranking Ohio State too high, not the Trojans too low, and I’m sure *you* would have caught it had I posted my draft. My bad.

As for USC, they continue to be ranked too high in every poll that ranks them at all. This is a bad football team that, despite having played only the 45th toughest schedule in the nation per the NCAA, is 61st in scoring offense and 40th in scoring defense. (Actually they are tied for both – tied with Georgia for scoring offense, and Kentucky for scoring defense. Let that settle in for a second.)

Or, look at it this way – what does USC have in common with the following?

South Florida
Northwestern
Michigan State
Wyoming
Utah State

The teams above, like USC are all ranked 5th in their respective conferences. Right now, in an approximate SEC analogy, USC (west) is equivalent to USC (east) – a mid tier team.

Here is my draft. My Mumme ballot is the first 12.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida
2	Alabama
3	Texas
4	TCU
5	Cincinnati
6	Georgia Tech
7	LSU
8	Boise State
9	Pittsburgh
10	Oregon	5
11	Ohio State	1
12	Iowa	2
13	Oklahoma State	7
14	Penn State	1
15	Wisconsin	1
16	Rutgers
17	Virginia Tech	1
18	North Carolina
19	Miami (Florida)	2
20	Stanford
21	Clemson
22	Oregon State	2
23	Brigham Young	2
24	California
25	Houston	14
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Arizona (#18), South Florida (#19), Southern Cal (#21), Utah (#22), West Virginia (#23).

The final eight or so are a mish-mash. How to you separate a bunch of three loss teams, many that have defeated each other?

You comments and suggestions are solicited as always. Maybe this time I can avoid an error that gets called out by Brian.