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November 5, 2007

My "AP" Ballot - Week 11

Bemoaning the weaknesses of Hawaii's schedule makes it easy to continue to move them down my ballot, especially when they are off for the week. If they aren't there to put up 60 points on the scoreboard, you can easily forget about them. I forgot about them so much that I moved Boise State ahead of them as the top team from the WAC on my ballot, at #16.

The top two on my ballot remain the same this week. Ohio State and Oregon both scored big wins in their quest for the championship. While Oregon remains behind LSU in the BCS standings, they may be getting enough people to notice that they have the chance to jump over LSU or even Ohio State should either of those teams have a less than stellar day.

That said, LSU's less than stellar days are becoming a bit commonplace. While that won't be enough for me to drop them from #3, it does make it seem like they are on the verge of not doing what it seems they were destined to do going into this season - play for the championship in their "home" field, at the Sugar Bowl.

Jumping into my #25 spot this week: Houston. I debated with myself about this, a sort of inner monologue. It came down to having a hard time rewarding any of the other Eastern teams from the SEC. I just haven't seen enough good out of Tennessee or South Carolina (especially with the Gamecock loss) to warrant having either of them around. The other major conferences don't really have strong teams beyond what I already had. So it came down to those other conferences.

The WAC was nothing outside of Boise and Hawaii, although Fresno State could be looked at, even if they are flaky. The Mountain West only really boasts BYU who I am waiting on until they play TCU. That left Conference USA since the MAC and SunBelt conferences are just horrid this season.

Three teams got looks: East Carolina, Houston, and Central Florida. East Carolina scores the big points in the conference, having beaten the other two. However, they also have the worst loss out of conference to North Carolina State. I can't honestly put a team with that loss in the rankings. Central Florida had the best losses outside of conference, with both teams they lost to having been ranked highly, but putting them ahead of a now unranked South Florida when they got spanked by them, didn't work for me.

So you get Houston, who lost the opener to my #2 Oregon and also to my #22 Alabama, both on the road. The Alabama game was almost an upset. Their loss to East Carolina was only by 2 points, so they get the nod for my final ranking position.

Here is how I would rank the teams going into Week 11:

1. Ohio State
2. Oregon
3. LSU
4. Oklahoma
5. West Virginia

Posted by bmiraski at November 5, 2007 4:10 PM

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