BlogPoll Ballot 9-30-08: New Blood

Here we go again! I complained last week that there was a gridlock and because of that I failed to make any changes in my top 14. I couldn’t do that this week because in a crazy flashback to last season Top 25 teams were dropping faster than the New York Mets in the MLB playoff race. This week only one team remained where they were last week and the chances of them remaining in the same place for very long are slim.

There has been a changing of the guard at the top of the poll where Oklahoma becomes the third team I’ve voted for behind Georgia and USC. Missouri is the only team that stays in the top 5 with Oklahoma.

Teams Moving Up

Oklahoma – The Sooners may have the most powerful offense in the nation and their defense isn’t bad either only giving up 13 points per game.

LSU – The Tigers are still the class of the SEC until someone knocks them off. The Florida Gators are next.

Penn State – PSU is suddenly the Big 10’s next BCS Championship contender.

Alabama – Seriously, raise your hand if you thought the Tide was going to thoroughly dominate Georgia the way they did.

Texas – In my opinion the Longhorns have been the most impressive team in the Big 12 based on expectations.

South Florida – The Bulls are building a case as the Big East’s top team.

Texas Tech – The Red Raiders move up because of attrition but they are going to have to earn their strips to stay there.

BYU – The Cougars are looking more and more like Cinderella each week.

Ohio State – Pryor is giving the Buckeyes new hope but there is still a long way to go.

Auburn – The Tigers scored a win over Tennessee but offense remains a concern.

Kansas – Benefactors of attrition.

Tulsa – The Golden Hurricane play in the same conference as East Carolina (C-USA) and are a lot more explosive. They are averaging 54.8 points per game.

Oklahoma State – The Cowboys seemed to be improved on defense and their offense is scary good.

Vanderbilt – Attrition

Boise State – Attrition

Teams Moving Down

Georgia – At least the Bulldogs lost to a top 10 team.

USC – Even though it was on the road losing to Oregon State is still unacceptable.

Florida – Losing at home to unranked Mississippi was the most shocking event of the weekend.

Wisconsin – The Badgers had their chance against Michigan but gave it away

New On The Ballot

Utah #17, Fresno State #21, Michigan State #23, Virginia Tech #24, Connecticut #25

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Oklahoma	1
2	LSU	4
3	Penn State	4
4	Alabama	6
5	Missouri	--
6	Texas	5
7	South Florida	7
8	Texas Tech	1
9	Brigham Young	3
10	Georgia	7
11	Southern Cal	10
12	Ohio State	3
13	Auburn	3
14	Kansas	3
15	Florida	11
16	Tulsa	3
17	Wisconsin	9
18	Oklahoma State	3
19	Utah	7
20	Vanderbilt	4
21	Fresno State	5
22	Boise State	3
23	Michigan State	3
24	Virginia Tech	2
25	Connecticut	1

Dropped Out: Clemson (#13), Colorado (#18), Wake Forest (#20), East Carolina (#22), Illinois (#23).

USC Bandwagon Out Of Control After Everyone Jumps Off

Man I knew we were making a mistake by catapulting USC to the top of the rankings after they hammered a bad Virginia team in their opener. We almost didn’t have a choice after they hammered Ohio State 35-3 a few weeks later but there were still some holdouts. Three voters in the AP, five voters in the USA Today Coaches Poll and eleven voters in the BlogPoll all refused to drink the USC Kool Aid and now they absolutely have the right to scoff and say, “I told you so!” Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them. I bought the hype.

I wonder who will be the next team that ESPN tells us could be the greatest of all time. My bet is that it will either be a Big 10 team (Penn State or Wisconsin) or the Missouri Tigers. Keep in mind that Penn State hammered Oregon State 45-14. Besides that for some reason ESPN likes to take the best team from a bad conference and put them on a pedestal. See USC as the latest example of this.

Who Is Number One Now?

Here’s a quick look at the teams who could be the nation’s top ranked team when the polls are released on Sunday.

Oklahoma – The Sooners have the top scoring offense in the country and face their first ranked opponent of the season this Saturday when TCU travels to Norman.

Georgia – The Bulldogs were the top team to start the season and could regain that ranking with an impressive win over Alabama Saturday night.

Florida – The Gators would sneak in there should Oklahoma and Georgia falter this weekend.

PETA Wants To Ruin Your Ice Cream!

This has absolutely nothing to do with sports but it’s an opinion that has to be shared. The people at PETA have officially gone insane! They’ve had some really crazy ideas in the past but this latest statement is the snow cap on top of Stupid Mountain.

The fine people of PETA have officially asked the founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream to use human breast milk instead of dairy milk in their ice cream. Yeah, I’ll give that a minute to settle and allow you time to clean what ever you were drinking off your computer monitor.

"The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry’s could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk."

I don’t want to do a cow a favor I want to eat a cow! I certainly don’t want to eat ice cream made from some woman’s breast milk. In fact, the National Organization of Women (they also have several lookouts on Stupid Mountain) should be brought in here because this has to be degrading to lactating mothers in some sort of way.

This is the reason that 99.9% of the world’s population doesn’t take PETA seriously. To protest I’m going to have a double cheeseburger, cheese fries topped with bacon and a chocolate milkshake for lunch today.

BlogPoll: We Don’t Know Who Should Be #1

Six teams received first place votes in this week’s BlogPoll which makes me wonder if we just aren’t a little too biased in our polling. Of the six teams only Georgia received a solo vote while the other five had at least two. I was actually one of the one’s who was hanging on to the Bulldogs as the nation’s top team until a few weeks ago. Now, I really can’t make a legitimate argument for Georgia to be #1 (#2 maybe but not #1). I can’t argue for LSU or Alabama being #1 either. Both teams have been impressive to this point of the season but not more so than USC or Oklahoma. Then there’s Florida. The Gators routed Tennessee last Saturday and also soundly beat a Miami (FL) team that thumped a bad Texas A&M team in College Station. If we just went by score comparisons (seriously, what else do we go by) then the Gators have made about the same argument as Oklahoma for the nation’s top spot.

What all this tells me is that the SEC bloggers think that, like most BCS conferences do, their best team should be #1. They just don’t know yet who that team is.

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Southern Cal (65)	24.8	0.5	--
2	Oklahoma (3)	22.9	1.5	--
3	Florida (3)	22.4	1.4	--
4	Georgia (1)	22.2	1.7	--
5	LSU (2)	20.8	1.9	1
6	Missouri	20.5	2.5	1
7	Texas	17.8	3.0	--
8	Alabama (2)	16.8	3.5	2
9	Penn State	15.9	2.5	--
10	Wisconsin	15.9	2.8	2
11	Brigham Young	14.5	2.2	2
12	Texas Tech	13.8	4.3	--
13	South Florida	12.7	2.8	2
14	Wake Forest	12.2	3.2	3
15	Ohio State	9.2	4.9	3
16	Utah	9.2	3.4	3
17	Auburn	8.6	4.5	2
18	Kansas	6.7	3.5	2
19	Vanderbilt	5.9	4.3	2
20	Boise State	5.7	3.7	6
21	TCU	3.4	3.3	5
22	Oklahoma State	3.1	3.9	--
23	Clemson	3.1	3.6	--
24	Illinois	2.2	3.1	--
25	East Carolina	2.1	2.9	11

Also Receiving Votes: Colorado(1.9), Nebraska(1.8), Fresno State(1.5), Oregon(1.5), Connecticut(1.3), Virginia Tech(1.3), Kentucky(0.6), Ball State(0.5), Tulsa(0.4), Georgia Tech(0.4), Michigan State(0.4), Miami (Florida)(0.3), California(0.2), Northwestern(0.2), Minnesota(0.2), UNLV(0.1),

Total Ballots: 76

Votes by blog here, votes by team here.

Advice For Those In Debt

In today’s credit driven world it is extremely difficult for a person to stay out of debt. Consumers are able to apply and purchase so many things quickly that they actually don’t realize the minimum payments and payoff balances that they are building up. By the time a person realizes their situation it is too late. A person just simply can’t overcome their debt by only making their minimum payments each month.

With the rising cost of gas prices and the declining economy more and more Americans are facing bankruptcies and foreclosures. Both of these options leave long term effects on a person’s credit report. There is another solution available that bills.com wants you to be aware of. More and more people are turning towards credit counseling as their solution.

Credit counseling has become so helpful that the federal government now requires candidates for bankruptcy to seek credit counseling first. However, by reviewing your financial situation, advising you about budgeting and helping to devise a plan to become debt free credit counseling is extremely beneficial long before a person reaches the point where they are looking at bankruptcy or foreclosure.

While credit counseling does appear on your credit report it doesn’t affect you credit score and is certainly better than bankruptcy or foreclosure.

If Gary Sheffield Finds Out Who You Are You’ll Be On His List

So here’s the story. Gary Sheffield charges the mound Friday night in the Cleveland Indians/Detroit Tigers baseball game gets beat up and now vows revenge on the players who threw punches at him. As soon as he finds out who they are. After getting pegged by Fausto Carmona in Friday night’s game Sheffield glared at the Indians pitcher all the way to first base. Then after Carmona tried to pick him off the fight was on.

I guess Sheffield was expecting warm hugs and firm handshakes when he charged into a group of opposing players screaming and ready to fight. Instead he suffered a beat down and now wants his revenge but isn’t sure who to take it out on.

"When guys take cheap shots, I take that personally," he said. "When I find out who they are, they'll have to deal with me. I'm not one of those guys to sit here and talk about what I'm going to do, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do. But when I challenge a man, I challenge him to his face. "It will never end until I get you. That's just the way it is. I don't mess with nobody. I don't bother anybody, but when you bother me, it's on. It could be off the field, on the field, it doesn't matter. I don't care about what the league thinks or about what they do. I have enough money to cover any fine they've got, trust me."

Perhaps Sheffield should start with Carmona. That’s who Sheffield instigated the fight with and it is also the one who beat him like a rented mule. Sheffield suffered the worst beat down from a pitcher since Robin Ventura charged Nolan Ryan. The difference is, I think Ventura actually learned a lesson.

BlogPoll Ballot 9-23-08: The Gridlock

I didn’t make any changes in numbers 1 – 14 this week because they all either won or were off this past weekend. Yes, some wins were more impressive than others but the truth is that it is all a gridlock right now. All of the BCS teams will be in conference play within the next few weeks and we’ll learn a lot more then.

Teams Moving Down: As a result of the gridlock only two teams moved down on my ballot this week. I didn’t punish Auburn very much for losing to possibly the best team in the SEC. I only dropped the Tigers one spot. I couldn’t be as kind to East Carolina who had been the main story early this season but suffered their first loss Saturday at North Carolina State.

Teams Moving Up: Ohio State, Kansas, Colorado, Tulsa and Wake Forest were all benefactors of the snowball effect resulting from the losses by Auburn, East Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee. I would say that of that group Colorado and Wake Forest had the most impressive wins.

Teams Dropping Out: This week we are saying goodbye to West Virginia and Tennessee. The Mountaineers showed some of the worst clock management ever in their loss to Colorado and the Volunteers were absolutely dominated by Florida.

Teams Jumping In: Vanderbilt and Boise State have earned their way onto my ballot this week.

Rank	Team	Comments	Delta
1	Southern Cal	IDLE	--
2	Oklahoma	IDLE	--
3	Georgia	Won 27-10 at Arizona State	--
4	Florida	Won 30-6 at Tennessee	--
5	Missouri	Won 42-21 over Buffalo	--
6	LSU	Won 26-21 at Auburn	--
7	Penn State	Won 45-3 over Temple	--
8	Wisconsin	IDLE	--
9	Texas Tech	Won 56-14 over UMass	--
10	Alabama	Won 49-14 over Arkansas	--
11	Texas	Won 52-10 over Rice	--
12	Brigham Young	Won 44-0 over Wyoming	--
13	Clemson	Won 54-0 over S.C. State	--
14	South Florida	Won 17-9 at FL. International	--
15	Ohio State	Won 28-10 over Troy	2
16	Auburn	Lost 26-21 to LSU	1
17	Kansas	Won 38-14 over Sam Houston	2
18	Colorado	Won 17-14 over West Virginia	4
19	Tulsa	Won 56-14 over New Mexico	5
20	Wake Forest	Won 12-3 at Florida State	5
21	Oklahoma State	IDLE	--
22	East Carolina	lost 30-24 at N.C. State	6
23	Illinois	IDLE	--
24	Vanderbilt	Won 23-17 at Mississippi	2
25	Boise State	Won 37-32 at Oregon	1

Dropped Out: West Virginia (#18), Tennessee (#20).

Next Five Out: 26. Utah 27. TCU 28. Fresno State 29. Michigan State 30. Miami (FL)

That's my vote this week. Let me know where you think I went wrong!