Week 3 Blogpoll Ballot

I am making mine a little more fluid based on how the teams look each week. Things will likely balance out after a few weeks.

As a special note, I won’t be ranking USC at all this year because of their bowl ban. I figure there is no point in it.

They beat them at VT. VT is 0-2 and they lost to an FCS team at home. JMU beat an FCS team at home and beat VT.

No one has any idea who the best team is because they have only played one or two games. BSU barely beat a team that lost to James Madison at home. Based on that, they are probably not the #2 team. No one really knows since there have only been a few games and most teams don’t play each other. The teams ahead of Boise beat better teams more easily, so they should be ranked higher at this point.

And that win suddenly looks a lot less impressive. That may (and probably will) change, but if you’re going purely by resume Boise’s just went from “quite good” to “two points worse than a 1-AA team did against the same team”.

I’ve been working on some computer rankings for football and basketball (one version is the equivalent of KRACH in college hockey, if you follow such things – this one ignores score entirely – and the other is a modification that takes score into account but in a weighted manner such that a few more points in a close game mean far more than those same points would in a blowout). After two weeks of games, Boise ranks 52nd (though in a virtual tie with Toledo and Iowa State for 50th) in the version that counts only wins and losses, and 87th (!) in the one that counts score (because all it sees is a 3-point win over a team it considers 18 points below average). Of course, VT’s rating in those systems has a lot to do with it, and it’s unlikely to stay that low for the remainder of the season – but if we truly base the rankings only on this season, that’s what we have to work with at this point.

Then again, I think that’s more a commentary on the uselessness of any sort of ranking system (including opinion polls) after two games have been played. Frankly, I’m not convinced you can get sensible results before the midway point of football season; there’s simply not enough data.

One of the biggest problems with traditional polls, and one of the tendencies that the BlogPoll specifically tries to counter, is the notion that a team is entitled to “its spot” until it loses. On my ballot, I moved Ohio State ahead of Boise, partly because I was impressed with what OSU did to Miami and partly because, like it or not, the quality of Boise’s win was diminished by VT’s loss to JMU. How far would you take it? What if VT finishes 4-8? Do we still have to pretend that the win over VT was impressive simply because the Hokies were an overrated top 10 team when it happened? Boise plays a weak schedule. I have them #4 on my ballot currently. As the season transpires, and as teams such as Alabama and Florida and OSU and Texas and Oklahoma accumulate more impressive wins, while Boise whips up on Idaho and La. Tech, I’ll probably drop them further.

There’s no moral entitlement to a position in a poll. At this point in the season, there is some projection involved, but by midseason, the polls should purely be a reflection of the accomplishments of the teams. If teams like OSU and Texas and Nebraska and Alabama and Oregon remain undefeated, then those team will deserve to be ranked ahead of Boise, regardless of who was ranked higher first.