The Stinging Bite of the Newspaper Smackdown

Rick Neuheisel made some waves earlier this week by taking out a full-page ad laying the smackdown to cross-town rivals USC.

Needless to say, we here at the House Rock Built admire the chutzpah of throwing down the gauntlet, particularly in doing so in such an old-timey fashion. Seriously, newspapers? In an age of television and radio and, ahem, blogs and such, taking out a newspaper to send a message is recklessly old-school. By god, I don't even think Pete Carroll even reads the newspaper. It would be much more effective to send a message via, I dunno, facebook or Twitter or some shit.

Mission accomplished, thousands of dollars saved.

Not surprisingly, Neuheisel isn't the first coach to take to the press for local trash talk, although there has been a pretty big layoff between the last prominent newspaper ad, when the 1889 Rutgers football team dropped the gauntlet on intrastate rivals Princeton. Sadly, Rutgers dropped its next 13 meetings against Princeton, which goes to show the dangers of hubris.

Cyber T-Shirt Cannon: Strike While the Iron is Red and Inflamed

Think fungal infections ravaging through a football team's loins is funny? Your goddamned right you do! Maybe it's time you make a statement with this fashionable shirt from the House Rock Built's gift shop. It's all the rage, you know.

Blogpoll: Best Friend Means I Pull The Trigger Edition

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	--
2	Southern Cal	--
3	California	1
4	Boston College	1
5	Wisconsin	3
6	South Florida	8
7	Ohio State	5
8	Oregon	2
9	Kentucky	4
10	Arizona State	8
11	South Carolina	4
12	Clemson	5
13	Georgia	3
14	Florida	11
15	Oklahoma	6
16	Purdue	8
17	West Virginia	7
18	Missouri	1
19	Cincinnati	1
20	Texas	9
21	Virginia	4
22	Hawaii	4
23	Florida State	3
24	Nebraska	1
25	UCLA	1
Dropped Out: Alabama (#19), Michigan State (#21), Rutgers (#22).

We celebrate bloodshed Saturday with a wholly-revamped ballot. I got a "wack balloting" mention for only dropping Clemson to #13 (they're #24 in the blogpoll). Eh. Maybe it's just residual man-crush for C.J. Spiller. Or maybe it's because I excessively punished the top five teams that lost this week and Clemson was the unwitting benefactor of this dumping (even though they had an embarassing loss of their own). Onwards!

• Uh, you know, the chainsaws. I propose we change the blogpoll from a top 25 ballot to a top 2 ballot, because that's all that matters right now. Sure, both Southern Cal and LSU showed some cracks in the armor this weekend, but the season is still theirs to lose.
  
  
• Um, a fucking grab-bag of ridiculous teams round out the top ten. Cal? Boston College? South Florida? Kentucky? Arizona State? Really? You can clearly see the steep dropoff that comes after the #2 spot. All of these teams are doing well and are undefeated, but I'm shocked and a little bit saddened that we have a glut of George Masons clogging up the top eschelon. We've got the second half of the season for the wheat to separate itself from the chaff here, and as we get deeper into conference play, it'll start to become apparent who here is for real and who is a pretender with some lucky bounces and good scheduling.
  
  
• Oregon gets a very small slap on the wrist. When you take the #3 team in the country to the wire and lose on a catastrophic stroke of bad luck, I can't be too punishing in the rankings. Especially since the teams in their area (Florida, Oklahoma, Texas) dropped their games to inferior competition.
  
  
• Sort of a grab bag at the bottom. Everything else is pretty interchangeable.

Blogpoll: The Deeper The Wound, The Harder I Swoon And Wish That That Was Me

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	--
2	Southern Cal	2
3	Florida	2
4	Oklahoma	2
5	California	2
6	West Virginia	--
7	Clemson	1
8	Oregon	1
9	Boston College	12
10	Alabama	16
11	South Carolina	2
12	Texas	2
13	Wisconsin	2
14	Ohio State	4
15	Kentucky	11
16	South Florida	3
17	Missouri	9
18	Michigan State	8
19	Penn State	3
20	Cincinnati	6
21	Rutgers	8
22	Nebraska	7
23	Arizona State	3
24	Hawaii	1
25	Texas A&M	3
Dropped Out: Georgia Tech (#12), UCLA (#14), Arkansas (#17), Louisville (#20), Georgia (#23), Washington (#24).

Happy fun times! Week three is in the books and my ballot is up. At first glance, I'm seeing a lot of green and red arrows. I'm not completelyl schizophrenic, I just think that this third week has given us good cause to re-evaluate the top teams, cut losses with the dogs at the bottom, and reward scrappy little guys who have strung together wins against quality competition while the big boys are feasting on scrumptious cupcakes like Coastal Carolina, the dregs of the Sun Belt conference, and Notre Dame (d'oh!).

Oh, and the title of the post is from the song "Broken Heart", by Motion City Soundtrack. Their new album, "Even if it Kills Me" just dropped today and is in heavy rotation at the HRB bunker. If you like upbeat, synth-heavy whiny white boy rock, I'd recommend you give it a spin.

• Southern Cal regains its rightful place at 1A. Yeah, it's a little unfair to dump a team four places after a bye week like I did in my last ballot, but with the paucity of data on this Trojan team, I really had no choice. Just as I predicted, though, Southern Cal showed that they remain that insurmountable force we all knew they were going to be, and that they will have no problem trouncing the skulls of all the poor bunnies that are led to sacrifice against them. It's a tossup now between them and LSU, but when in doubt, err on the side of the gorilla with a chainsaw for a penis.



Worth another look on my blogpoll ballot.


• Florida storms back onto the scene. Florida had a bit of an inauspicious start on my preseason ballot, clocking in at number 11 mostly because of a hefty 15 points in the "show me first escrow". Suffice to say, I've been shown. Percy Harvin and Tim Tebow have not only taken those 15 points from me, but also my wallet, my girlfriend, and bitchin' Camaro. Welcome to the show, Gators. October 6 is going to be a horrifying bloodbath that will likely leave the southern half of the United States coated in smoking, radioactive ruins and werewolf fur.



• Bama, Boston College, and Kentucky catch a rocket ride. Sure, it might seem a bit irrationaly exuberant to bump two unranked teams into the top ten, but I like the cut of these teams gibs. Boston College has started the season with 3 in-conference games and cruised through them quite effortlessly, including a convincing pasting of Georgia Tech. With a veteran quarterback and some good mojo, they're beginning to look like a big fish in the admittedly small pond in the ACC.
  
  The same thing with Bama. Their win over Arkansas was inspired, and they're 2-0 in conference with an evil genius at the helm. Kentucky gets love just because watching highlights of students storm the field makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.



Wee! Tear 'em down!


• A big whatever for the rest of the pack. This is where the biggest swing is. The last ten spots more or less go to whoever has put together a couple impressive games in a row. Anyone who breaks my tenuous confidence gets unceremoniously booted from the ship in favor of a new, jazzier team to round out the bottom of the top 25. It was nice having you around, Tyrone Willingham. As I told you last week, your stay was over quickly, you did not enjoy it, and I am not your king.