Pollin' Week 8

First...the AP and Coaches:

Wake held at #21 in the AP (while being jumped by UNC who moved to #18) and bumped up to #19 in the Coaches' poll. The non-move in the AP is kind of surprising to me, but the more I think about it the more I'm not surprised. It's probably a fair ranking, and it was sort of surprising that we moved up the 4 spots last week, so whatever. UNC jumping to 18 is pretty surprising to me, though. I would love to get a shot at them in the ACCCG.

On to my BlogPoll ballot:

I scrapped anything I've used before and started over from scratch. When I publish this post it will be the first time I've even seen the "movement" from last week (those arrows and numbers on the left side). I guess they're interesting, but pretty meaningless because I started over and reevaluated everyone. Keep that in mind. I'll show you the poll and then talk about it:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Texas	4
2	Alabama	--
3	Oklahoma State	8
4	Penn State	3
5	Texas Tech	4
6	Oklahoma	5
7	Florida	9
8	Southern Cal	--
9	Missouri	6
10	Boise State	4
11	Utah	2
12	Brigham Young	--
13	LSU	9
14	Ohio State	1
15	Georgia	5
16	Virginia Tech	5
17	Michigan State	9
18	Wake Forest	2
19	North Carolina	3
20	Vanderbilt	14
21	Tulsa	2
22	Ball State	4
23	Minnesota	3
24	Kansas	2
25	TCU	1

Dropped Out: Northwestern (#17), Connecticut (#23), Pittsburgh (#24), South Florida (#25).

Let me explain some things here. First, the top of the poll. Picking between Texas and Alabama is incredibly hard. I'm sure someone could make an argument in the comments that would convince me to switch this before Wednesday, but here's my thinking. Alabama's win over Clemson is getting less and less impressive, and their win over Georgia is nice, but Georgia hasn't really beaten anyone. Texas's victory over Oklahoma was huge. It was a great game and a great win for Texas. I'm sure there are intangibles in play here - like that victory being more fresh in my mind, but intangibles or not that's the way it is.

Oklahoma State at #3? Indeed. Their victory over Mizzou was the second most impressive victory this week. Only 5 BCS teams are left undefeated, and so I feel like those 5 teams should comprise my top 5. Penn State has been great, no doubt, but Oklahoma State's win over Mizzou outweighs anything Penn State has done. Like I said, Texas Tech gets the nod at #5 simply by being undefeated. If they aren't that good, they'll lose soon enough and fall.

Oklahoma comes in at #6 because they still played a dang good game againts Texas, and have dominated everyone else they played.

Clearly I'm pretty bearish on Georgia. I don't feel like they have an impressive victory yet, but then their only loss is to the #2 team. A good argument could probably convince me to move them up, so let me hear it.

Ranking 15-25 is very hard right now, and even more so in the 22-25 range. I ultimatley went with Minnessota, Kansas, and TCU because they have more wins than some other teams being considered. Minnesotta has played 7 games already - 2 more than many other one loss teams. Considering the things we've seen this season, being two games farther into a schedule than another team with only one loss stands out to me. Clearly I won't be able to use that argument later in the season as things even out, but it works for me right now.

Let me hear your thoughts in the comments.