Preseason Blogpoll

OK, this is a little late, and due to that not in this years initial Blogpoll, but that's the way that is goes. For the season, I'll be posting that weeks poll on late Sunday/early Monday, to get thoughts and make any chances before the Wednesday morning deadline.

At this point, this is a purely speculative power poll. It will start to firm up after the first week or so. After the first 7 or so, it's mostly my gut feelings on these teams. Thus, this thing is probably waaay off.

For more info on the BlogPoll in general, check after the jump.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Southern Cal	25
2	Oklahoma	24
3	Georgia	23
4	Ohio State	22
5	Florida	21
6	Missouri	20
7	Clemson	19
8	West Virginia	18
9	Penn State	17
10	LSU	16
11	Texas Tech	15
12	South Florida	14
13	Oregon	13
14	Auburn	12
15	California	11
16	Texas	10
17	Virginia Tech	9
18	Arizona State	8
19	Kansas	7
20	Brigham Young	6
21	Wisconsin	5
22	Utah	4
23	Oregon State	3
24	Michigan	2
25	Fresno State	1

WHAT IS THE BLOGPOLL? It's basically the AP poll except with bloggers. It's a poll and so fall prey to all the things that polls fall prey to, but if you're so inclined these are the reasons the BlogPoll might be superior to other polls out there:

Everyone watches a ton of football. It's ironic that the two most prominent polls survey perhaps the two least qualified groups of people to vote: journalists and coaches. Both spend their Saturdays laser-focused on one game. Thanks to Gameplan and DirectTV, bloggers can suck in as many as 20 games every weekend.

Biases are disclosed and closely monitored. Every voter has to have a favorite team; voters without are laughed at and told to watch something soulless. The poll closely tracks each voter's level of bias and uses stern disapproval to keep would-be homers in check. (Would-be negative nancies are not quite so easily dissuaded.)

The poll's goals are clearly stated. The AP poll is full of voters who vote team X super high in the preseason because of its schedule; this is strongly discouraged by the BlogPoll. Preseason polls are supposed to be exclusively about how good a team is thought to be, and postseason polls are supposed to be exclusively about how much a team has accomplished on the field.

Now... it is impossible to separate the former from the latter in late-season polls because college football provides such a sparse data set, but at the very least BlogPoll voters know they shouldn't vote a 9-2 USC team #1 even if they think they're the best team unless that 9-2 includes three killer nonconference matchups.

Voters have more time for consideration. The poll comes out Wednesday morning, allowing voters to catch up on everything that happened and discuss it in the blogosphere. Other polls come out Sunday, and almost never take other's arguments into account.

It's weirder. The poll has some definite wackos in it, but they are relatively few and act as a net positive, forcing more mainstream voters to argue things like "Kansas probably shouldn't be #20 at 11-0" or "why rank Hawaii at all?"

It's more fun. No one really cares, so we can just vote and not have garments rent.