Pre-Preseason Blogpoll Roundtable Before the Preseason Blogpoll Before The Season Thing

The preseason blogpoll before the real preseason blogpoll came out last week. So now we have to do the roundtable before the preseason blogpoll but after the pre-preseason blogpoll. Make sense? Basically, we did a trial run on the preseason blogpoll last week. Now Brian has asked us to objectively evaluate our ballots, listen to other bloggers, and submit a new poll. So I decided to do what Congress does when they have an unpopular vote. Do it on a Saturday and hope Paris Hilton gets another DUI so come Monday morning it doesn't get any attention in the media.

Now, to evaluate my ballot I did what any good engineer would do. I created a table and used some math. The result is the following. You will see the blogpoll on the left, next to it the standard deviation each team saw in their vote, my ballot, and then the difference between my ballot and the blogpoll for each team. Meet you on the other side.

The teams that really stick out as being out of wack on my ballot are Georgia, West Virginia, Alabama, Boston College, Louisville, and California. So we'll focus on these teams.

Who is Overrated?

I don't pretend to be an expert on all of these teams. Quite frankly, with the exception of the Big Ten teams there isn't much I know about any of these teams. I basically flipped through Phil Steele's magazine and looked at his conference previews. I confess. But there is one thing I know. The Big East is not good. They play nobody except themselves. You can't put seven 130 lb men in a room, have them duke it out, and declare the winner the heavyweight champion of the world. West Virginia has no business being in the top five. I don't care about their bowl wins the past two seasons. They didn't beat anyone impressive in my book. Their offense rocks but their defense sucks. Put them in the Big Ten or SEC and they instantly lose three games. The same applies to Louisville.

Ohio State is also overrated. I'm sorry. You don't lose a Heisman Trophy winner, two first round draft pick wide receivers, your starting running back, and a few all conference linemen without taking a step back. They are not a top 10 team yet. They may be by the end of the year, but I'm not going to just grant them top 10 status yet. Especially after the way they got destroyed in their bowl game.

I ranked Cal pretty low just because I thought they were overrated last year and they didn't impress me much. But I must admit I don't know much about them so I'm willing to give the blogpoll voters the benefit of the doubt on that one. I'll probably move them up. I'm eager to see them beat someone though. I just don't get a good feeling about Pac-10 teams other than USC. The east coast bias is alive and well at BSD.

I put Florida State seven spots lower than the blogpoll voters on my ballot. I'm going to stick to this one. I know they have a new coaching staff now, but they still have Bobby Bowden. And their quarterback situation has me worried about them. Until I see some proof they've turned things around I'm not going to make assumptions.

Who is underrated?

I guess I'm supposed to defend my Georgia pick. I can't other than Phil Steele picks them to win the SEC East and has them ranked #11. The Blogpoll has them at #14 and so does Kyle. That's good enough for me. I'll be dropping them down some.

Similarly I have no defense of my Alabama vote at #12 other than Phil Steele likes them as a surprise team. I have my doubts. Saban is in his first year and there is already a lot of pressure on him. I'm going to drop them down some too.

I think I'm the only person that ranked Boston College. I confess this was completely based on last year's performance. Did I mention I hate preseason polls? Upon further review they have a new coaching staff so they are coming off the ballot. But they return a lot of talent so I may regret doing it down the road.

I see I have Texas A&M switched with Florida State in the blogpoll. I'm going to leave them there at #17. Despite getting beat pretty bad by California in the Holiday Bowl last year they wrapped up the regular season beating Texas and almost beating Oklahoma and Nebraska. They return 15 starters so they could be pretty good.

Making It Right

Here is what I plan to do. I'm going to take Boston College off. I'll move Cal up into their spot at #15. I'm going to drop Alabama into #23 and Georgia to #10. Then I'll put Oregon at #22 just cuz.

Preseason Blogpoll Comparison

Rank	Blogpoll	Blogpoll StdDev	BSD Ballot	BSD/Blogpoll Delta
1	USC	0.6	USC	0
2	LSU	3.6	LSU	0
3	Michigan	2.0	Michigan	0
4	Texas	2.8	Oklahoma	+2
5	West Virginia	3.4	Texas	-1
6	Oklahoma	3.1	Georgia	+8
7	Florida	3.8	Virginia Tech	+1
8	Virginia Tech	3.4	Florida	-1
9	Wisconsin	5.2	Wisconsin	0
10	Louisville	4.0	Penn State	+3
11	Ohio State	3.2	West Virginia	-6
12	California	5.5	Alabama	+13
13	Penn State	4.0	UCLA	+3
14	Georgia	5.9	Tennessee	+3
15	Auburn	5.6	Nebraska	+4
16	UCLA	5.2	Boston College	+10
17	Tennessee	5.2	Ohio State	-6
18	Florida State	5.8	Texas A&M	+7
19	Nebraska	4.3	South Carolina	+3
20	Arkansas	5.9	Louisville	-10
21	Rutgers	4.9	Auburn	-6
22	South Carolina	6.1	Hawaii	+1
23	Hawaii	4.7	California	-11
24	Oregon	4.7	Boise State	+2
25	Texas A&M	4.1	Florida State	-7
Rank	Team	Delta
1	Southern Cal	25
2	LSU	24
3	Michigan	23
4	Oklahoma	22
5	Texas	21
6	Virginia Tech	20
7	Florida	19
8	Wisconsin	18
9	Penn State	17
10	Georgia	16
11	West Virginia	15
12	UCLA	14
13	Tennessee	13
14	Nebraska	12
15	California	11
16	Ohio State	10
17	Texas A&M	9
18	South Carolina	8
19	Louisville	7
20	Auburn	6
21	Hawaii	5
22	Oregon	4
23	Alabama	3
24	Boise State	2
25	Florida State	1