Remember, folks, this is (a) a resume poll with zero actual games to inform it, and (b) it's a preseason poll, so it is twice accursed. But, ignorance being no bar to commentary (otherwise what would politics be, if not only much quieter?) let's dive in.
Last season, I always featured Three Rules to ballots in the SBNation BlogPoll. Invariably feathers would get ruffled by my ballots, so this season I'll whittle them down to just one. Of course, that One Rule is the same rule that so offended the poll watchers last season, but simply it is not going away. The One Rule is this: the loser of a game shall not outrank the winner of the same game, for at least one week. I believe that is the quintessence of resume polling-- what's a resume if it disregards the result of an actual game?
That being the One Rule, it does not apply in a pre-season poll. So this is (like any preseason poll) a bunch of wild guesses. Ballot and commentary below the jump.
The Purple Wimple Ballot - Week 1
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 2 | Boise St. Broncos | -- |
| 3 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 4 | Oregon Ducks | -- |
| 5 | Wisconsin Badgers | -- |
| 6 | Virginia Tech Hokies | -- |
| 7 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -- |
| 8 | Texas A&M Aggies | -- |
| 9 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 10 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -- |
| 11 | Stanford Cardinal | -- |
| 12 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 13 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 14 | TCU Horned Frogs | -- |
| 15 | Missouri Tigers | -- |
| 16 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs | -- |
| 17 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | -- |
| 18 | Central Florida Knights | -- |
| 19 | West Virginia Mountaineers | -- |
| 20 | BYU Cougars | -- |
| 21 | Arkansas Razorbacks | -- |
| 22 | Air Force Falcons | -- |
| 23 | Michigan St. Spartans | -- |
| 24 | Utah Utes | -- |
| 25 | Houston Cougars | -- |
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
Generally, between similarly positioned teams, I rank the teams with intact coaching staffs and experienced quarterbacks higher. That's why I take Boise over Alabama, Whisky over Virginia Tech, A&M over Florida State, and Central Florida, Air Force, and Houston at all.
I'm not sold that LSU actually has an offense, and with Jordan Jefferson's weekend issues, I'm even less sold. Another team that, in my opinion, is elsewhere ranked highly based on a lot of luck in 2010 is Michigan State. Earn it this season, Spartans.
For the haters: UCF probably would own your team in an actual game. Really. Utah is going to surprise a lot of people this year; and Houston would out-score some NFL franchises; if its defense improves, even just a little, I've got them way underranked.
Teams I won't be surprised to be ranking much higher in a few weeks: Texas, USC, Penn State, Pitt, Houston, TCU, Iowa.