2023 Blog Poll Week 4: A lot of contenders looked terrible, but there was surprisingly little chaos

You can forgive the Longhorns for struggling on Saturday. That was a guaranteed hangover game.

Besides, Texas is going to be doing a lot of scoreboard watching this year — Alabama is a threat to ruin their strength of schedule on any given week (anyone want to fight with me in the comments now and make a case for this Tide team being ranked?)

But Shortie wasn’t the only one who looked like trash. UGA was a dumpster fire for a half; Florida State was arguably gifted a win with some hella’ sketch officiating (Clemson better watch their ass this week; the Swofford the Tobacco Road Zebras knows Tallahassee is a better market for the league than the Swamp Barners; Tennessee was the fraud we though they were.

Meanwhile, Ohio State ran it up on a hapless CUSA team with one of the worst defenses in the country; Michigan is still sleepwalking through their cripple-kicking schedule; ditto Oklahoma. And Alabama is...well...2023 Alabama.

And, above it all, lurks the Pac 12, with about half a dozen teams that just keep absolutely blasting people.

Saturday is the much-hyped day everyone has been waiting for, but after a chaotic week that saw a lot of near-misses, we sadly enter Week 4 with little turnover in the Top 25.

Usual caveats apply: The 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, advanced stats, and my own lying eyeballs.

Ceterum censeo Tommy Rees delendam esse