Who Needs a Blog Poll 2020: There is Alabama and everyone else.

Couple of quick notes about the poll first:

Last week after dropping the Dawgs, I decided not to screw around this week; I outright kicked Georgia out of the Top 25...at least for a week. With every other team in the WNaBP Top 25, you can point to:

1. An undefeated major conference team see Notre Dame, Alabama
2. A signature win (or wins) with some gimmes thrown in there. These are your Texas A&Ms and Cincinnatis.
3. A solid schedule where the team has performed well or has improved throughout the year a la Oklahoma, Tulsa, Iowa State
4. Plays a midmajor schedule but has mostly been dominant (see, BYU, SJSU, Nevada etc.)

Show me where any of these apply to Georgia, or for that matter, Florida? You can’t. Florida’s key win of the year was against its coreligionist in suck, Georgia. Florida has been awful on the road. Its defense has regressed every week and you get the feeling that this is secretly a three-loss team hiding behind a shoddy SEC East. Georgia is no better. When it can’t score points (see basically the entire season), then its defense is getting shelled (see against Alabama...or even Mississippi State). Where Florida is outworking people with scheme and depth, Georgia is out-talenting them. The SEC East winner has a rude awakening (or an even ruder reawakening) on December 19th.

Tough loss by the Flames. But this is still a very good team that simply made too many mistakes. The wheels could come flying off the rails the next few weeks too, if we’re being honest.

As predicted, the Coastal defense would key a beatdown of a good App. State team — and they did.

You’re not fooling anyone Ohio State. We saw all of those ugly turnovers. That secondary. That inability to go for the kill. IU is a good team — it may be the best one you play until the CFP. But that’s not saying anything positive at all. All of that lost talent from 2019 is showing.

I docked Nevada for messing around with UNLV; they make another appearance this week.

Both Western Michigan and Buffalo are here for different reasons. Unstoppable offense on one hand, merciless defense and relentless RTDB on the other.

I finally stopped issuing demerits to Iowa State for losing to ULL early and at Okie Light early in the season. If you think OSU is actually a pretty good team battling too many injuries and that the Cajuns are an excellent G5 team, and I do, they are forgivable losses. The Cyclones have been outstanding the last month.

But, we do say goodbye to Oklahoma State. Three tests, and you’ve failed two of team.

I still don’t trust USC or UNC, thus they’re still not ranked. Both are waiting on signature wins on the season and I don’t know that either will get them.

The rest should be self-explanatory. As usual, the Blog Poll criteria are nebulous, far-ranging, and capricious — strength of schedule, bad and good coaching, injuries, exigent circumstances, home/away results, defense or lack thereof, offense or lack thereof, line play, power poll-ishness, can you cover a spread (Vegas is pretty smart about how good a team is), head-to-head where possible or prudent, and my own lying eyeballs.

Now, for today’s mini-editorial:

There simply is Alabama and everyone else. Don’t believe me? Look around.

Notre Dame’s schedule has been surprisingly weak (38th), and has struggled to put points on the board. Ohio State flailed around on the road against an awful and winless Penn State team, Justin Fields is a turnover machine, and its secondary rivals Florida — none of which, we add, are compliments. Wisconsin, as usual, failed its biggest test. Northwestern can’t score, even against schmoes in the Big Ten West (but I do actually like this gritty, low-talent team). Clemson — like many others on this list — has had injury concerns and has a very questionable secondary.

Indiana is a good team buoyed by early Ws against winless Penn State and a Michigan team that struggled against Rutgers. But they’re done, barring two OSU losses. Texas A&M finds itself in this same boat, incidentally. The Big 12 winner will have at least two losses. The PAC 12 will be lucky to play half a dozen games, and has no momentum going into the first rankings — nor should they have any. Cincinnati and BYU are outstanding midmajors. But, for all that, they are midmajors (and, in the case of the Cougars, they just don’t play anyone).

So, look around again, look at the advanced metrics, subject the season to your your eyeball test, and tell me that there is objectively is a 1A in 2020? I don’t see it. As of Thanksgiving Week, there seems to be Alabama and then everyone else fighting for the right to lose by 14-21 points in the College Football Playoff Championship Game.