UPDATE: Week Four BlogPoll Ballot Submitted

As long as you’re admitting you’re just being biased for bias’s sake, fine.

But you know you don’t get ever claim you don’t really care about Auburn again, right? If you care enough to get this much undisguised glee out of keeping them out of your freaking BlgoPoll ballot, oh, Todd, you care. Admit it.

You admit that Ball State is a cupcake, and that Louisiana Tech is looking that way too. So that leaves only Mississippi State and West Virginia remaining, so let’s look closer at those two.

Mississippi State did surprisingly beat Vanderbilt, and they did play close against LSU. Nevertheless, they are a 2-2 team right now, and looking at the rest of their schedule — given Houston and Georgia Tech remain on the OOC schedule — their best chance for another win this year is against Middle Tennessee State (and that’s far from a given). This is still, most likely, a 3-9 team, and 2-10 is still very much in play.

West Virginia lost to you guys, and struggled against Liberty. They are probably looking at being an 8 or 9 win team from the Big East, and given how poor that conference is, they probably would struggle just to get bowl eligible in the SEC.

And those are the two “quality” wins? No way, my friend. I hate to be overly antagonistic, but there’s a reason why you guys are 4-0 with three blowout wins and still not ranked, and that reason is the extremely easy schedule to date.

… about LSU, they have done absolutely nothing special. In fact, for most of the year, they have played downright terrible, and the only reasons they are ranked so high is (1) everyone knows they have a ton of talent, and (2) they are basically just getting voted that high based on the assumption that their success from 2000 on will continue this year.

That’s a valid argument, no doubt about it. I’ve previously said that there is absolutely no way whatsoever that they are the #4 team in the country, and the fact that they are ranked that high clearly exposes a flaw in the ranking system we employ.

And, in all fairness, you guys might beat LSU. I’ll be the first to admit that and I’ll do so with no reservations or qualifications to that statement. If LSU continues to play like they have to date, and you guys do the same, it should be a very close game that could go either way.

Nevertheless, though, even with that said, all that establishes is that it is ridiculous that LSU is ranked that high to begin with. It doesn’t say that Auburn should be ranked highly (or at all), it merely says that LSU should not be ranked anywhere near they are right now, and the reasons that they are ranked that high are largely arbitrary and at any rate irrelevant to their actual quality as a football team in 2009. Simple enough.

And, frankly, the LSU ranking is largely a moot point right now. The smart money is likely on them losing to both Georgia and Florida in the coming two weeks, and after that they will be ranked very low in the top 25 (if at all), which is where they should be ranked now. They are an anomaly that is taking advantage of some of the structural shortcomings of the ranking system we have in place, and over the course of the next two weeks we should see a re-adjustment period that will ultimately value them much closer to where they really are (and frankly should have been all along).