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October 25, 2006
My "AP" Ballot - Week 8
For those that weren't aware, the real AP voters have their votes posted each week by the Associated Press. You can analyze where any bias in their voting comes from by checking out each individual voter, and looking at the schools they cover.
However, there is still a strange bias out there that I can't figure out. For the past two weeks, there have been two writers out of California who have been voting for West Virginia as #1. If they were from Northern California, I might understand it. Northern California is another world from Southern California, and they would do anything up there to avoid seeing USC play for another National Title. But both of these writers are from the Southern part of the state. And they cover the UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans. Now, UCLA, I can understand, but USC? The Trojans are ranking up as one of the top teams in the country and even their own writer won't put them first. And apparently they won't acknowledge the strength of the Big Ten conference either. Either Michigan or Ohio State, I could see the argument for. But West Virginia, I don't get.
That said, I have the Mountaineers third on my list this week after their win over Connecticut. Ohio State and Michigan, my top two for the last few weeks are still holding down the top spots and their hold is getting stronger all the time. I don't expect to see them moving anytime soon either since they have easy roads to their collision in the middle of November
At #4, I still have Texas. Even their close win showed me a lot about how far this team has come from their loss to Ohio State earlier this season. In the game though, I learned a lot about Nebraska and what kind of team they are. They showed something that was missing in their game against USC. As a result, they didn't drop as far as you might expect for a team with two losses. And they are still ahead of those pesky kids at Notre Dame, who squeaked out a win again.
Moving into the Top 5 is Clemson who are pulling away as the class of the ACC and are one of only two ACC teams to make my 25 this week.
Here are my "AP" rankings for Week 8:
- Ohio State
- Michigan
- West Virginia
- Texas
- Clemson
- USC
- Louisville
- Florida
- Auburn
- Tennessee
- LSU
- Cal
- Nebraska
- Notre Dame
- Boise State
- Arkansas
- Missouri
- Wisconsin
- Rutgers
- Oregon
- Oklahoma
- Georgia Tech
- Tulsa
- Texas A&M
- BYU
Ben Miraski writes for MRISports.com and is a featured blogger on FanIQ. Readers can contact Ben at bmiraski@mrisports.com
Posted by bmiraski at October 25, 2006 2:00 PM
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