This week's BlogPoll roundtable is up over at My Opinion On Sports, and I thought I'd take a stab at it.
The Battle for #1 - USC and LSU are separated by one vote in the AP poll. We made the switch in last week's blogpoll by putting the Tigers in our top spot. State your case for who should be the top team in the country.
I put LSU at #1 in my blogpoll ballot this week, but I'm essentially making my ballot a kind of power poll, knocking people up and down based on how they played this week while also taking into account their entire season's performance. I had Oklahoma at #1 for several weeks now since they really looked like the best team in the country to me, but after their loss to Colorado I had to drop them to #10. As for LSU and USC, I've gone back and forth on who should be on top of who. USC hasn't really shown that they are a marauding band of football evil yet, while LSU, who did look like that the first few weeks, has struggled in weird ways the past two weekends, so it's kind of a toss up at this point. I will say that LSU seems to have accomplished more than USC, at least in my vaguely foggy recollections of what I've seen and read from each without actually doing even a little bit of research, so for now I'm going with LSU as the best team in the country.
Oklahoma, Florida, West Virginia, Texas and Rutgers were all upset this weekend. Of those teams, who has the best shot of getting back into the national title hunt?
Oklahoma, then Florida. The Sooners are right back in it with a win over Texas this weekend, and the rest of their schedule shapes up for a perfect run. Plus, they'll have the Big 12 Championship Game to boost them even more. Florida also would get a huge boost if they were to upset LSU this weekend, but I doubt that will happen, and two losses eliminates them from any hope of getting to the BCS Title Game. Same for everyone else on the list. None of them really look like they're going to run the rest of their schedule, so poop for them.
Looking at the current AP Top 10, who is grossly overrated and who should be in there that isn't?
The South Florida story is a great one, but they are not a Top 10 team, even though I ranked them as such in my BlogPoll Ballot. Of course, I dropped Georgia out of the Top 25 all together while being swept up in that wild, 5-0 UCONN Huskies fever, so what do I know?
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| If you do a Google image search for "uconn huskies football" you'll find this picture of the UCONN dance team preparing to invade Cuba. |
Anyway, yeah, the Bulls? Not as good as you'd think. The two games I've seen them play they won, but by no means was it their offense carrying the team. In fact, Auburn gift wrapped the game for them and they still only managed a win in OT after numerous chances to seal the deal in regulation, while I fully believe West Virginia would have won had Pat White stayed in the game. The 2nd string QB (whatever his name is, I don't care, otherwise I'd look it up) had the 'Eers in scoring position twice before throwing two picks, and that was the difference for USF. Also, the D got one of USF's TDs, so I'll give them all the credit in the world, but Matt Grothe, redneck athlete freak of nature that he is, is no premier QB and that offense is going to cost them more than one game down the stretch. Also, Florida only fell to #9 after struggling against Ole Miss and letting Auburn manhandle them in the Swamp? Whatev.
As for who isn't in the Top Ten but should be? Eh. Hawaii, I guess. They're undefeated, why not?
What is the worst coaching mistake you've seen this season?
I'm going with a game our own beloved Tide lost on this one, and that's the first drive of the Georgia game when we allowed them to convert three consecutive third and longs with screen passes because we stayed in man coverage. Everyone knows Georgia is going to run every damn screen imaginable on you, and South Carolina layed out the blueprint for any team that wants to beat UGA this year. Let them convert once? Understandable. Three times? No sir. I was jumping up and down screaming at the TV over that last one that went for a TD, and I have to say that was some of the most befuddling defensive playcalling I've seen yet.