Blogpoll: Saint Barbara Don't Let Me Explode! Edition

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	--
2	Michigan	--
3	Rutgers	9
4	Southern Cal	5
5	Florida	--
6	Arkansas	4
7	Notre Dame	1
8	Louisville	5
9	Wake Forest	9
10	Boise State	3
11	Wisconsin	3
12	LSU	1
13	Auburn	9
14	Texas	7
15	Tennessee	--
16	Georgia Tech	1
17	West Virginia	2
18	California	12
19	Boston College	7
20	Oklahoma	4
21	Maryland	2
22	Brigham Young	2
23	Nebraska	2
24	Virginia Tech	2
25	Hawaii	--
Dropped Out: Texas A&M (#20), Oregon (#22).

Before I unveil this week's blogpoll, let us bow our heads in a solemn prayer to Saint Barbara, the patron saint of Landmines, artillery gunmen, and, according to Wikipedia, anyone who works at risk of sudden and violent death. This week, a veritable gaggle of teams saw their championship dreams meet a bloody and merciless end, a slew of attrition that is nearly unprecedented in these late weeks of November. And, alas, I'm stuck in the position of trying to make sense of the wreckage and aftermath, matching dismembered limbs of teams with their appropriate ranking. It's a gory job, but dammit if I'm not going to try.


Make that three consecutive blogpolls with a Hold Steady reference.

• One and two. Catch you cats this weekend.



• Rutgers... and a Xanax, please. I vascillated on this one for a while, but at the end of the day, I felt it would be disingenous if I didn't give them a rocket ride. I had Louisville at number three last week, and when they are beaten by a team from their own conference that is also undefeated, I can't think of a good reason to give Rutgers the exact same treatment. I'm literally losing my mind at the thought of putting the State University of Rutgers this high, since that puts me under some sort of obligation to bump them to number freaking two after the UM-OSU game. Mind... exploding. Clocks... melting. Beam me up, God.



I am un chien Andalousia.


• 4 through 8 have some national championship aspirations. And there has been a pretty big shakeup. USC takes a big jump for a variety of reasons. In addition to their unholy vengeful beatdown of Oregon, I'm seeing their big win over Arkansas in a different light each week that the Hogs stubbornly refuse to collapse and vindicate my preseason bashing. I had to make a big decision this week whether to rank these teams by the quality of their wins or the quality of their losses. USC sports the best win and the worst loss in the group, so it's difficult to know exactly what to do with them.
  
  At the end of the day, I decided to go by win quality, as I plan to keep that the hallmark of this poll. The reason? 1993. Notre Dame and Florida state finished the year with one loss apiece. Notre Dame had the best win of the group, beating... you guessed it, Florida State. However, Florida State had a higher quality loss... against Notre Dame as opposed to ND's loss to Boston College. It's a tricky paradox to think that Notre Dame punished itself by being successful and thus making the Seminoles' loss more forgivable. I don't like that strain of circular logic, and I'm going to instead put more value on quality wins than quality losses.
  
  Ergo, your next five, based on their best win's ranking. USC beat Arkansas (6), Florida beat LSU (12), Arkansas beat Auburn (13), Notre Dame beat Georgia Tech (16), and Louisville beat West Virginia (17). It's a very, horribly, insanely imperfect science, but I gotta do what I gotta do.



• And... uh, the rest. Done with a combination of schedule strength, victory chains, and of course my trusty dartboard.
  
  

So that's that. Next week is going to be even more crazy.