The latest edition of the AP poll, released on Sunday, shows no changes amongst the top 3 teams. However, with teams ranked 4, 5 and 6 all losing this weekend, the rest of the top 10 had a significant shakeup. Boise State and Virginia Tech are the biggest winners in terms of poll position this week. If Boise State wins out (which is highly likely given their remaining WAC schedule), they will be in SERIOUS consideration for the BCS come December. USC and Oklahoma also were benefactors this week, moving back into the top 10 (star power and early season losses really do make a difference in college football).
Given the wide fluctuations in the week to week polling of College Football teams, I began to research who votes in these polls and how they are voting. I stumbled across a really helpful website http://pollspeak.com/football.htm
which enables you to sort through each voters polls and how extreme their ratings are, in terms of the other pollsters. There were some pretty mind boggling polls I stumbled across. The winner of the most extreme poll this week is Doug Lesmerises of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer newspaper. His top 5 includes, in this order; Alabama, Boise State, Houston, Florida and Iowa....I am assuming that his reasoning relies solely on the premise that teams should be ranked by who they have beaten, not on their pre-season hype. Now, if he continues to vote on this premise, then by the end of the season his poll should be fairly consistent with the rest of the voters, so for now I have absolutely no problem with his poll. Early season polls are really only around for the fans and the media outlets to promote games. That's why the BCS doesn't come out till after week 6, computers can't compute hype.
As I filtered through some of the other 58 voters in the AP poll, I noticed an interesting similarity between the two ESPN College Gameday voters, Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler. They both had Oklahoma ranked higher than anyone else did, all the way up at number 4. See below:
It could be all possible that these two guys honestly believe that Oklahoma is the 4th best team in the country right now and I wouldn't have a problem with that. However, it seems kind of fishy that they have Oklahoma ranked higher than 56 other voters with the Texas/Oklahoma game right around the corner. Remember, the game will be broadcasted nationally on their network. Therefore, a higher ranked Oklahoma at the time of the game will more than likely lead to a larger audience and higher ratings and in turn $$$ ESPN......and you wonder why a playoff hasn't been established in college football?
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