Blogpoll: It's War Edition

A fairly mellow week of football, a fairly radical blogpoll. Feast your eyes on it.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	--
2	Michigan	3
3	Auburn	1
4	Oregon	1
5	Florida	1
6	Southern Cal	2
7	Louisville	--
8	Tennessee	2
9	Notre Dame	3
10	Boise State	1
11	Georgia	3
12	Georgia Tech	8
13	Cal	--
14	West Virginia	4
15	Louisiana State	--
16	Boston College	7
17	Clemson	--
18	Oklahoma	3
19	Iowa	10
20	Texas	4
21	Missouri	5
22	Rutgers	2
23	Navy	3
24	Texas Tech	2
25	Wake Forest	--
Dropped Out: TCU (#14), Virginia Tech (#19), Arizona State (#22).

Okay, so there are four groups of teams:

• The "Conversation": To ape a term from BGS, there are seven teams that have distinguished themselves as contenders at this point. Welcome to the big dance, Ohio State, Michigan, Auburn, Oregon, Florida, USC, and Louisville. While their actual jockeying of position is contentious and fairly subjective and arbitrary, it's hard to deny that these are the big boys. Unbeaten and untied, plus they've actually fared well against real competition. I've ordered them more or less on strength of schedule at this point, but also have taken into account how they've performed and how they've looked.



• The Little Lebowski Urban Achievers (and proud we are of all of them): The next nine teams have impressed with quality wins, but have also slipped up, struggled, or not quite proven enough to bump them out of the show, at least for the time being. Please meet Tennessee, Notre Dame, Boise State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Cal, LSU, BC and Clemson. The ordering was pretty easy, since a lot of these games have already been played head to head (Tenn-Cal, Notre Dame-GT, BC-Clemson), so we can tell who has prevailed among them. Georgia's sputtering woes against two very weak teams has caused them to slide off the radar, GT jumps into the game after an impressive win over V Tech, and Boston College makes a big leap mostly because I, uh, must have forgotten about them last week. The fact that I had them below Clemson was a bit of silliness that I've tried to eradicate in my poll. Mea culpa, Eagles fans.



• The Unprovens: Three teams I think are good, but haven't won a real football game yet. For crying out loud, kids, it's five weeks into the season. Win a football game already! Texas has a marquee win over... let's see... Iowa State? The team that had a fourth quarter ralley to beat Northern Iowa this week? Or is it North Texas, Rice, or Sam Houston State? Win the Red River shootout, and we'll see a big correction. Lose, and maybe, just maybe, you're heading for unrankedville.



• Gotta Put Somebody In There: The bottom is rounded out by some scrappy programs that I'm treating to a little bit of respect. Texas Tech is the last team I threw in there. I guess beating A&M is kind of an achievement, so, howdy, welcome to the poll.

I have until Wednesday morning to change my mind. Hit me with your best shot in the comments.