Now in its seventh year, the College Football BlogPoll is a weekly effort of dozens of college football-centric Web sites representing a wide array of schools under the oversight of SB Nation. As always, this is an ever-evolving snapshot meant to judge teams exclusively on their existing resum�s. It pays as little regard as possible to my guess as to what's going to happen over the course of the season, or what would happen in a make-believe game "on a neutral field" or anywhere else. It's subjective, but ideally, it's not a guess: It's a judgment on the evidence that actually exists. It is not a power poll.
The particularly virulent strain of anarchy that took hold of the BCS standings over the weekend has tended to blot out everything else in the name of speculation and uncertainty, and hey, it is that time of year. But there is still one certainty at the top: LSU, whose dominance was established so early, and has been reinforced so decisively, that it's almost easy to take the Tigers for granted. While every other would-be frontrunner has been busy dodging bullets from every direction, LSU has put so much distance between itself and the rest of the poll that it can almost afford a mulligan over the final two weeks ? after road wins at Alabama and West Virginia and neutral-site throttling of Oregon in the season-opener, a win over Arkansas on Friday virtually guarantees the most impressive resum� in the nation regardless of what happens in the SEC Championship Game the following week.
The fact that No. 2 Alabama could actually secure a slot in the BCS Championship Game before the Tigers ?�if they follow an LSU win on Friday with a win over Auburn on Saturday, the Crimson Tide will pass straight to the national title match without the nuisance of actually playing for their own conference title ?�is a whole new level of byzantine injustice, even for the BCS. (Seriously: If the status quo holds, the system will be essentially rewarding Alabama for losing to LSU on Oct. 5.) Based on what we've seen so far, though, any skepticism about the Tigers' final destination is purely academic.
? Ain't got a place to fall. Yes, Oklahoma State lost to Iowa State on Friday night, and yes, I still have the Cowboys ranked ahead of Arkansas, which appears at No. 3 in all of the mainstream polls. That's a (predictably) knee-jerk reaction by the pollsters: As bad as the collapse in Ames looks, Oklahoma State still has six wins over winning teams to Arkansas' three, not including the 60-point blowout OSU laid on Texas Tech in Lubbock. Arkansas has also had its own road issues against mediocre teams, struggling to put away Ole Miss and Vanderbilt�in consecutive weeks in October. And frankly, an overtime loss to a winning team on the road isn't that much worse than getting shellacked by Alabama.
At any rate, that's only a temporary tale of the tape: Any and all remaining questions about the Razorbacks will be answered definitively Friday in Baton Rouge, where they will either stake their claim on the SEC and BCS championships or go tumbling into the abyss of two-loss teams below, never to be heard from again until the Cotton Bowl.
? The Big Sleep. Regarding the abyss of teams below Arkansas: There is very, very little margin this week between No. 5 (Boise State) and No. 20 (Baylor). Clearly the Broncos and Bears belong at the top and the bottom of that grouping, respectively, but the rest are organized more or less categorically: After Boise, there are the other one-loss teams with relatively uninspiring schedules (Stanford and Virginia Tech), followed by the cream of the dog-eat-dog Big 12 (Oklahoma and Kansas State), followed by the best of the Pac-12 (USC and Oregon), followed by the Big Ten bloc (Michigan State, Penn State, Michigan and Wisconsin), followed by the Southern flank (Clemson, South Carolina and Georgia), which frankly is a lot longer on reputation at the moment than on impressive wins.
This is where the Big Ten and Big 12, especially, can effectively counter the SEC's top-heavy chest-beating with their impressive parity throughout the league. Where the most notable part of both South Carolina and Georgia's schedules is the absence of Alabama and LSU from either one ? Georgia conveniently missed Arkansas en route to the division title, too ?�there have been far fewer omissions in the top halves of the Big Ten and Big 12, and those teams have the battle scars to prove it.
? No, I see you. Houston finally beat a team with a winning record by more than four points, and for that the Cougars move up a spot, from No. 20 to No. 19. They still need two more wins to convince me to stop calling them out as the most overrated team in the nation: This Friday against 8-3 Tulsa, which has taken seven straight on the heels of a brutal non-conference schedule, and then in the Conference USA Championship Game against (most likely) Southern Miss. As it stands, Houston has still yet to beat a team that's guaranteed itself of a winning record.
? Proof. This week's resum� grid for public consumption:
L: Losses
PPG: Average margin of victory (points per game)
YPP: Average margin per play (yards per play)
Sked: Strength of schedule (as calculated by Jeff Sagarin)
As always, everything will be completely different next week.
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Matt Hinton is on Facebook and Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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