Blogpoll: I Ain't Settlin' For Anything Less Than Everything

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Southern Cal	25
2	West Virginia	24
3	LSU	23
4	Michigan	22
5	Louisville	21
6	Texas	20
7	Auburn	19
8	Hawaii	18
9	Georgia	17
10	Virginia Tech	16
11	Florida	15
12	California	14
13	Rutgers	13
14	Florida State	12
15	Tennessee	11
16	Wisconsin	10
17	Oklahoma	9
18	Ohio State	8
19	Texas A&M	7
20	TCU	6
21	Boston College	5
22	Boise State	4
23	Penn State	3
24	UCLA	2
25	Duke	1

Woo-hoo, it's blogpoll time! A couple beers, a well-thumbed copy of Phil Steele's guide, and some random conjecture later and the House Rock Built is making its debut splash in the blogpoll. For those of you who don't remember from last year, I have a very, very, very, ridiculously scientific way of determining my preseason top 25. You see, since there's nothing to judge any of these teams on yet, we have to use math, science, astrology, conjecture, heresay, and spreadsheets to come up with something approximately resembling a sensible arrangement of teams. In case you need a refresher on my category names, here's a handy guide that will help you out:

CIVFLYP	Completely Irrelevant Velocity From Last Year's Performance
WLBGB	Won Last Bowl Game Bonus
SAWO	Score At Will Offense
CDG	Casualty from Draft and Graduation
FSDD	Freaky Shut-Down Defense
VCC	Very Compotent Coach
SMFE	Show Me First Escrow A little more complicated stat, these are points I'm purposely withholding from a team until I've taken a look at their performance. Like Mark May, I'm old school Missouri, I demand that you show-me before I give you props. If after a few games, I see that the team has it together, these points will be added into their score.
VQB	Veteran Quarterback

If it's not obvious, this is intended to be a mockery of the convoluted logic that dictates preseason polling. Not to say that I'm not taking this seriously or that this is a joke ballot... it most certainly is not. It's just an exaggerated breakdown of the voodoo math that goes into assigning a preseason rank. By and large, it looks quite a bit like the AP preseason poll, which is probably because about 30 of the writers pay me a hefty royalty to use this very spreadsheet. But let's keep that under wraps. Scouting out any crazines...

• Hawaii is #8. Okay, that's crazy. But, to be honest, they really have everything that makes for an attractive preseason team. They have arguably the most battle-tested quarterback in the league, a lot of "completly irrelevant velocity from last year's performance", and that all-important bowl win last year, which somehow is a huge factor for preseason polling. I'm keeping them there... for now.
  
  
• Auburn gets a boost. Eh. That might mean there's something wrong with me. They were #1 in my preseason poll last year.



• No Love for Florida. Come on, coaches poll. #3? I mean, look at this. That's a full half page of lost lettermen. Sure, sure, they've got great depth and recruiting and momentum, but I'll believe it when I see it. I'm holding 15 points in escrow until Urban can show he can pull another rabbit out of his hat.



• Duke is #25. As always, so Steve Spurrier doesn't feel alone. As you can see, he did it again this year.

Full documentation of my painstaking process below:


Science, motherfuckers!

Who Wants the Second Golden Ticket?

Run, Charlie! And don't stop until you get home!

The time was, when it got down to the heated last few weeks of the football season, all you had to worry about was how the pollsters were going to react to what you did, then how the bowl game results shook out. Now, with the BCS title game, the BCS championship winner is decided in December (that is to say, the field is narrowed down to two teams, barring some wacky split title situation. What's even worse, they threw a bunch of computers into the mix, so that there are three unrelated measuring devices all working on their own bizarre set of laws and axioms that determine who gets that magical second golden ticket.

You can hack around in the computer matrices to get an idea of possible scenarios, you can spend hours and hours pouring over possibilities over beers with your buddies (check), or, fuck it, you can just come right out to the media and start pre-emptively crying like a little baby about the cruelty of the system and openly lobby for support from the pollsters.


Hey, win or lose, let the tears flow and the healing begin

Anyway, my insta-pundit analysis is up at The Fanhouse, and I go into some detail there about my read on the latest set of garbled data from the BCS warehouse. The long and short of it?

The bottom line? If you're a BCS lover who wants to see the system peacefully put together a championship game that will have the minimum of tears and bloodshed, you had better root for Southern Cal as hard as humanly possible this weekend, as USC winning out provides the most clear-cut claim to the #2 spot.

But if you like chaos, burning couches, mass rioting and decades-long bloodfeuds that might very well begin the slow death of the BCS, cheer as loudly as possible for Notre Dame to beat the Trojans. And just for good measure, root for Arkansas to beat LSU and Florida. Essentially it will come down to the mania of the pollsters and which team they irrationally catapult to the top of the rankings in reaction to their big win. If the numbers get really tight, it could very well come down to how these teams' opponents fare in the last few weeks, as every precious fraction of a point in the computer rankings will be valuable for a BCS championship dream. Also, don't be surprised if the #2 team in the polls is shut out of the BCS championship due to computer scores, setting up a perfect opportunity for a split title should Ohio State falter in the title game.

Just one man's take on this crazy drug trip known as the BCS. I'm getting that out of the way now, as I want to spend the rest of my abbreviated week getting mentally prepared for USC, partially because it's the biggest game in Charlie Weis' career, and partially because the more I think or obsess about the BCS, the further down the rabbit hole I fall, plunging helplessly into a dark insanity that no man can return from... which I can only presume is a bad thing. After this post, BCS discussion will be minimal, but perhaps I'll put together a "Tale of the Tape" for old time's sake (remember those?)


Oh, God. Why did I take the red pill?

Anyway, I'm flying out to Southern California on Wednesday this week, and between the traveling and turkey-ingesting, I'm pretty sure I'll be unable to give you a proper week's full of posting (again... I know. Commence the flogging). However, I'll do everything I can to get the hate flowing for USC, plus I have a Q&A with boifromtroy that will be coming up on our upcoming Blogjammin'. Now let's beat the hell out of some Trojans.

Friday... Er... Sunday Night Lites: SMQ Edition

A somewhat abbreviated and horribly delayed Friday Night Lites is up. This week, we welcome the Sunday Morning Quarterback to the show. We caught up with the SMQ at halftime of the Louisville - West Virginia game and chatted about the BCS, the state of college football as the season winds down, and who is for real and who is a fraud.

Sadly, we didn't have time for a lightning round, but we've got a raincheck on that. I think the SMQ can cause some serious damage and rightly deserves a shot at the title, much like an undefeated BCS team deserves a shot at a national title (nice segue, huh?)

Anyway, listen to the chat and enjoy. It seems like we're both like-minded in the scathing necessity for a college football playoff, and as such we're both rooting for massive chaos come selection time and the continued debasement of the mythical "BCS championship" crown.

Prost!

MP3 File

AP Pulls Back the Curtain, Releases Ballots

In a curious move that I've been screaming for for several years now, the Associated Press has released this week's ballots to the public. I'll leave the serious data mining for the more mathematically-inclined bloggers (and, I suppose, the hobo who stole Tommy Tuberville's Cray 9000), but it's pretty interesting to peruse some individual ballots.

One observation I noticed is that a certain overweight and unemployed hack journalist has Notre Dame at 16. Hmmm.

UPDATE: Before Brian panics, don't worry, I'm not talking about you. Har har har.

Also, a commentator noted that Craig James has a psychotic ballot. Georgia Tech ranked above Notre Dame? Fascinating. I'm pulling up a chair and waiting for a good explanation on that one.