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2010 Dominance Ranking

The final Dominance Ranking (national rank in scoring offense + scoring defense) for 2010; bold indicates a conference's pre-season favorite.

1 Boise St.
2 TCU
3 Oregon
4 Ohio St.
5 Stanford
6 Alabama
7 Northern Ill.
8 Wisconsin
9 Nevada
9 UCF

11 Oklahoma
11 Utah
11 Virginia Tech
14 Nebraska
15 Missouri
16 Florida St.
17 San Diego St.
18 LSU
19 Iowa
20 Auburn
21 North Carolina St.
22 Arkansas
22 Oklahoma St.
24 Georgia
25 Maryland
26 Air Force
26 Hawaii
26 Texas A&M
29 Mississippi St.
30 Florida
31 Illinois
32 Western Mich.
33 Louisville
33 South Carolina
33 West Virginia
36 Pittsburgh

Why to 36? Because that's how far one must look down the list before encountering the Big East pre-season favorite. Could one explain more succinctly why Dave Wannsted is no longer a head coach? Not that Coach Wanndsted performed particularly worse than his peers: the top ranked Big East teams tied at 33rd with South Carolina, exactly one ranking ahead of the Panthers.

Two conference pre-season favorites (C-USA's Houston, and SunBelt's Middle Tennessee State) were too far down the list even for this post, at 55th and 68th, respectively.

Boise got the last laugh here, having spent much of the season atop the rankings. It's not much consolation, but the finish boosts the Broncos into the top spot in the cumulative rankings since 2001 (about which, more in the next post).

Notable: San Diego State, Maryland, and Hawaii improved the most over 2009, rocketing 87, 84, and 73 places, respectively, in the rankings. Central Michigan (last year's darling of the rankings), Texas, Ole Miss, and Rutgers were the wilting lillies of the 2010 rankings, falling 74, 73, 69, and 66 places, respectively.