Blogpoll: ATQ Final Ballot

The end of another year of college football, and the cries for a playoff grow even louder.

After the bowls ended, I was very tempted to put USC first on my ballot. If USC and Florida met in the National Title game, USC would be favored by around 2 points. If it was an east coast game, Florida would be favored. These teams would put on a great show.

But the BlogPoll isn't about who would win. It's about who accomplished more over the entire season. And Florida has the best resume by a million miles. I'll just leave it to Dr. Saturday to explain it:

I'll spoil the surprise and say Florida is my No. 1 team by a pretty good distance on the pack by virtue of beating a national-high nine teams that finished the season in bowl games with winning records, two of them in everybody's final top-10 and four in my initial top-15 below. The Gators faced the toughest schedule in the nation, based on opponents' combined winning percentage, and still won by 30 points per game, the highest average margin of victory in the country. That is a ridiculous fact, and won't be denied here because of a missed extra point against Ole Miss.

I also feel that I should discuss my #5 ranking of Utah. First of all, congratsulations to Utah. They are a great team, and had a great season. But they are far from the #1 team in the country. They beat 3 teams I ranked in my top 25 (Alabama, TCU, and Oregon St), beyond that, what did they do? As many strides as the MWC has made, they still have a worse conference strength than the Big East. Though they have 2 great teams, the bottom half is still deadful. There is a lot to be said to playing great-to-average teams every week. Utah played what we would call cupcakes for most of the season. When you face good teams every week, that makes your schedule much harder than when you face 2 great teams in a season. Now, if Utah had been lights-out in all of their games, I would probably be giving them the benefit of the doubt. But they struggled with Michigan, and they should have lost at home to both TCU and Oregon State. When your schedule is that weak, style points matter. And Utah didn't earn any during the season. As good as they were in the bowl game, it does not overcome the season results in my eyes. Utah had a great season, but they are not #1 in my eyes.

Some other ranking of note, I'm still not ranking TCU or Boise State very high, for the same reasons as I ranked Utah #5. While TCU has a great defense, when they play very good teams, their offense is almost non-existent, which would give them serious problems against the Top 10.

As for Oregon, I ranked them over Ohio State because they have stronger wins. Their losses are not as good, but Ohio State's best win is over Michigan State. Also, they finished the season the strongest, out of all the other 3-loss teams, which counts for something.

Beyond that, the ballot is a mess as usual. The full ballot if after the jump, and remember, this is just a draft (until Monday), so leave your comments.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida	1
2	Southern Cal	2
3	Texas	--
4	Oklahoma	3
5	Utah	5
6	Penn State	--
7	Alabama	2
8	Texas Tech	1
9	Oregon	5
10	Ohio State	1
11	TCU	5
12	Georgia	3
13	Boise State	2
14	Mississippi	8
15	Virginia Tech	5
16	Oklahoma State	8
17	Florida State	9
18	Oregon State	1
19	Cincinnati	7
20	Georgia Tech	7
21	Iowa	2
22	California	2
23	Michigan State	6
24	Missouri	6
25	West Virginia	1