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Tired of anonymous ballots of AP writers and college football voting after seeing on a fraction of the games from that week, if any, SBNation decided to take things into its own hands. Over 100 different blogs enlisted to provide ballots of their own that will be aggregated into the official SBNation BlogPoll rankings. ODB is one of those blogs. Each week of the season, I will compile the individual ballots of each football contributor here and submit that as our official ballot. Because things were a little strange this week with both Sunday and Monday night games, that submission took place this morning. In the future, the first ballot will go in on Monday and be finalized on Wednesday. Also, I didn't have a chance to do the compiling this week as scientifically as I would like; rather than actually averaging the three sources this week (thermhere, Prashanth, and myself) I combined them in an ad hoc fashion. I'll correct that process in future ballots.
The ballot itself takes up a lot of space, so I put it below the jump. I firmly believe that all three of us tried to keep our innate homerism to a minimum in crafting our ballots. Still, the charge will be made (and is, in all likelihood, at least somewhat true) and people will quarrel with the ODB ballot as submitted. I'm ready for it. Give me your thoughts on the Top 25 in College Football in the comments. I have 24 hours to update our ballot should we choose to make a change, and I'm certainly open to good arguments!
OurDailyBears Ballot - Week 1
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 2 | USC Trojans | -- |
| 3 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 4 | Oregon Ducks | -- |
| 5 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 6 | West Virginia Mountaineers | -- |
| 7 | Georgia Bulldogs | -- |
| 8 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 9 | Arkansas Razorbacks | -- |
| 10 | Clemson Tigers | -- |
| 11 | Michigan St. Spartans | -- |
| 12 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | -- |
| 13 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -- |
| 14 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -- |
| 15 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 16 | Virginia Tech Hokies | -- |
| 17 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | -- |
| 18 | Wisconsin Badgers | -- |
| 19 | TCU Horned Frogs | -- |
| 20 | Michigan Wolverines | -- |
| 21 | Baylor Bears | -- |
| 22 | Texas Longhorns | -- |
| 23 | Kansas St. Wildcats | -- |
| 24 | Boise St. Broncos | -- |
| 25 | Louisville Cardinals | -- |
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
I'll let the individual contributors give their thoughts in the comments below. The three of us seemed to agree on the top 8 teams in the country almost exactly. We were exactly the same on the top 5. As for me:
- I found it especially difficult to rank Notre Dame, Wisconsin, and, remarkably enough Oklahoma State. I've been hard on them for their beatdown of Savannah State, but I don't agree with the polls pushing them beneath Texas in the aftermath. That particular effect of the general overrating taking place of Texas doesn't make sense to me.
- I'm not 100% convinced that West Virginia has the defense to be a national title contender, but they're clearly, to me at least, the class of the Big 12. Oklahoma's problems were not just a lack of execution against UTEP. Their offensive line looked awful.
- Boise is being unduly punished for losing to a good Michigan State team. Dropping them out of the polls completely for that loss alone is too much. They're better, especially on offense, than they looked this past week.