BlogPoll Ballot Week Five: Alabama and Oregon Prove Their Worth

in BlogPoll by Asher Feldman — October 3, 2010 at 5:03 pm | 1 comment

Alabama took care of business against Florida and Oregon ran all over Stanford.

These are two of the best teams in the country. So how does it change my BlogPoll ballot?

Let’s find out:

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What I’m Thinking:

• Big changes in week five. My No. 1 all season, Ohio State looked iffy against Illinois, while Alabama took care of their second top-10 SEC opponent in two weeks. That’s good enough to convince me that they’re the real deal again this year. They’re my new No. 1.
• Oregon showed just how good they can be this year, making Stanford’s defense look weak after spotting the Cardinal an 18-point lead, and are my new No. 3. Stanford doesn’t seem to have everything as advertised, and take a tumble to No. 17 in my ballot.
• Nebraska, Boise State and TCU get laddered downward to make room for Oregon, but its not so much what they did wrong as much as what the Ducks did right.
• Auburn and Cam Newton look very very good against some pretty poor competition, and with LSU’s shocking victory from what would have been a very ugly defeat does not make LSU a convincing No. 2 in the SEC. Auburn takes that title for now.
• Michigan State makes a nice jump for beating Wisconsin without coach Mark Dantonio, and just edges out Michigan in preparation for the Spartan-Wolverine showdown coming up in week six.
• Florida State looked good over the weekend and makes a nice jump up along with Oregon State and Iowa who beat conference foes. We’ll hold judgment on just how good Iowa is before giving them credit for beating an obviously overrated Penn State team.
• USC Watch: Gone! USC did not look like a top-25 team in their last-second loss to Washington, Jake Locker and Erik Folk. That’s two years in a row that’s happened. I was at the 56-0 victory over the Huskies in the Coliseum in 2008, and this was not anywhere close to that team. It’s certainly possible that USC can make a return appearance in these rankings, but with a pretty tough Pac-10 schedule looming, it might be tough.
• Texas is the other dropout after looking sloppy against Oklahoma although the Sooners almost gave the Longhorns the victory in the final minutes.
• New arrivals this week are Missouri and Air Force who have both looked very good in the early going. We’ll see where a very fluid bottom quarter of the ballot will go as the season goes on.
• Conference Breakdown: SEC (5), Big Ten (5), Pac-10 (4), MWC (3), Big 12 (3), ACC (2), WAC (2), Big East (1).

So what do you think? Missing anyone? Giving anyone too much/too little credit? Let me know!

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Tags: alabama crimson tide blogpoll ohio state buckeyes oregon ducks week five