BlogPoll, Post-Week One Carnage

Stewart Mandel at SI.com has ND at 15. The ESPN Power Rankings have us at 15. The AP Poll has us at 20. I'm interested to see what the BlogPoll bumps us up to.

(EDIT: Posted simultaneously with my rankings, the Blog Poll has us at 17. That's a nice middle ground. I'll take it.)

Me? I've got 'em at fifteen. A&M lost, ASU was impressive against Temple and BC will have to beat somebody other than BYU on the road to open the season. Who would lose that game?

Oh. Let's move on.

1) Southern Cal
2) Ol' Rocky Top
3) Virginia Tech
4) The Ohio State University
5) Florida
6) Michigan
7) LSU
8) Iowa
9) Texas
10) Georgia
11) Louisville
12) California
13) Purdue
14) Florida State
15) Notre Dame
16) Texas A&M
17) Arizona State
18) Boston College
19) Miami (FL)
20) Georgia Tech
21) Alabama
22) Minnesota
23) Auburn
24) Penn State
25) NC State

This was almost as hard as the preseason poll, because now we're judging teams on only one game as opposed to none. And usually, that one game was against a terribly overmatched team, or in the case of an Auburn or Texas A&M, do they get to take their mulligan early? I don't want to drop either out of the polls because of losses to teams that could end up very good by the end of the season.

Some other notes:

* Ol' Rocky Top is probably way too high with that quarterback situation. Fulmer's declared Clausen the starter for next week, despite the fact Ainge maybe has a higher ceiling. A 7-point win over UAB...at home? Eeesh.

* NC State looked better than Miami (FL) or Florida State, but I'm giving a lot of credit to the potential of Kyle Wright and Xavier Lee. Still, I gave NC State the final spot over TCU, who probably deserved to be on.

* Cya, Oklahoma. Enjoy the 5-loss season coming up.

* I think the Irish, if based solely on one performance, deserve to be even higher, but it remains to be seen how good/bad Pitt will be or how the defense will fare against a team with four playmakers like Henne, Hart, Avants and Breaston, double the number Pitt had. If I'm taking one thing to heart with this poll, it's that close losses to a good team will not hurt you badly, if at all.

So if Texas loses a close one in the Shoe, I'll probably move them up, because that means a helluva lot more than pounding UL-Lafayette 60-3. Fun times to be had Saturday.

* From Chris Leak's stats, I thought Florida had to have been amazing, but the guys over at EDSBS are still a little skeptical of how the junior QB will do running in Meyer's offense. I think the game against Rocky Top next weekend ought to shake that out nicely.

* If Penn State plays as poorly as they did on Saturday against the Bearcats, they'll be dropped out, 2-0 or not. Eeesh.

* With Nate Longshore going down, someone may slowly be slipping an anchor onto Cal's poll position. The back-up was 0 for 10....against Sacramento State. Double Eeesh.

* Games I watched: Wisconsin-Bowling Green, TCU-OU (second half), Michigan-NIU (first quarter), BSU-UGA (first half), Va Tech/NC State (second half), FSU/Miami (FL), Ga Tech/Auburn (4th quarter), ND/Pitt, bits and pieces of Utah/Arizona and Penn State/USF.