As usual, ballot below and brief commentary below the jump:
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama |  2 |
| 2 | Texas | |
| 3 | Florida |  2 |
| 4 | Virginia Tech | 5 |
| 5 | Boise State | 1 |
| 6 | Cincinnati | 1 |
| 7 | TCU | 1 |
| 8 | LSU | |
| 9 | Miami (Florida) | 11 |
| 10 | Southern Cal | |
| 11 | Iowa | |
| 12 | Ohio State | 6 |
| 13 | Kansas | 1 |
| 14 | Penn State | 2 |
| 15 | Oregon | 4 |
| 16 | Oklahoma State | 1 |
| 17 | Auburn | |
| 18 | Nebraska | 6 |
| 19 | Brigham Young | 2 |
| 20 | Georgia Tech | |
| 21 | Wisconsin | |
| 22 | Mississippi | |
| 23 | South Florida | 2 |
| 24 | Missouri | |
| 25 | South Carolina | 8 |
| Last week’s ballot | ||
I now have Florida third. I know they didn’t play last week, so why did I move them lower? Tebow’s injury. This is not a resume thing, it is an intrinsic “power” ranking, and I think it fair. Had Tebow gone pro, we would have devalued them early, and the fact that Tebow might not play certainly affects one’s prediction for the Gators’ game against LSU. I don’t see why I’d have to ignore it. It is subjective, but that’s balloting. I have Alabama ahead of Texas because they have played quite well all year. This early though the whole 1-2-3 distinction is quite moot; it will be settled on the field one way or another.
A brief digression about resume ranking based on above. I like the resume ranking movement, but I disagree that it is the end all, be all of ballots. Yes, traditional power/prestige/reputation/impression ranking is subjective and often biased (sometimes intentionally, usually subconsciously). But that’s not a reason to go pure-resume, it is the reason why one person’s ballot doesn’t entail the whole. The various perceptions and little nuggets of insight get compiled into one specific whole — the wisdom of crowds. Computers aren’t allowed to consider margin of victory — regardless of how predictive that stat is for who might win a game — so their rankings have flaws, but humans can judge not just the margin but also the tenor of the game. Sometimes that is misleading, but, again, amalgamated, these subjective impressions can be a positive. LSU has not looked as good as their record; that is fair to consider, for example.
In any event, the rest of my ballot isn’t too controversial I think. It is the usual mix of “wow that team is lower than I thought, but hey I don’t like them that much more than the teams above them,” and “wow that team is higher than I’d think, but how do I rank them below a team with losses/bad losses/etc.” In other words, it is a quasi-rational quasi-subjective mix. The only notables are that I felt quite punitive to both Houston and Oklahoma. Oklahoma will have many chances to redeem itself and get back into the mix — two out of conference losses is not so crippling if they rebound. Houston might not have those opportunities, but you can’t lose to UTEP. I’m sorry. If they keep winning they will likely sneak back in (to some extent dependent on how Oklahoma State looks for the rest of the year), but them’s the breaks when you’re a non-BCS school. It’s not an argument against the small conferences, but there are simply fewer opportunities to evaluate those teams.