BlogPoll Top 25 – Week 1

Photo Attribution: Icon SMI

Yours truly has been hand selected by SB Nation to participate in the annual BlogPoll Top 25 voting system. Did they pretty much let anyone in who had a halfway decent blog, could type a sentence with less then 4 misspellings, and knew how to pen “Ryan Perrileaux”? Sure, but don’t let that keep you from thinking it’s a prestigious honor to be included in such a thing.

So what is this BlogPoll thing you speak of Pistolsguy? Let me explain in 3 bullet points (because that’s what I was taught to do in business school):

1. Every Monday I (along with hundreds of other college football bloggers) submit my top 25 poll to SB Nation who then creates a composite ranking based on other bloggers’ polls

2. From Monday-Wednesday you guys (my readers) get to weigh in via the comments section to tell me what I had wrong. Don’t think Texas should be that high? Light me up. Mississippi State is underrated? Let me have it.

3. On Wednesday I (along with hundreds of other college football bloggers) re-submit my poll for an official ranking later that week.

The truly awesome thing is that you guys get a say on what this poll looks like and the blogging community, who is generally much more in tune with what true college football fans think than some graduate assistant voting in the coaches poll or some writer who only covers 1 team, gets to voice its collective opinion. In other words: there’s going to be a lot of Boise State love.

Plus the transparancy will be refreshing as you guys get to call me out for being an idiot.

You can read more about the BlogPoll here. Let’s get on with my Week 1 rankings/explanations.

First, a few premises I used in going about this:

• I ranked the teams by who I think would win 51 out of 100 neutral field games. Example: I think OU would beat everyone else in the country 51 out of 100 times on a neutral field. I think OSU would beat everyone else in the country 51 out of  100 times on a neutral field besides Alabama and OU. So on and so forth.
• I’ll probably do this differently during the season and throw a lot more weight on “what does your entire body of work tell me” but I’ll default to it if, say, Oregon is 11-1 in late November and Boise is undefeated but hasn’t played anyone (in other words, if two teams have similar resumes I’ll go back to the who would win 51 out of 100 if they played each other 100 times).

And some notes on the poll:

• I look like SUCH a homer putting my Cowboys in the top 5 but ask any of my other contributors (Q, Amilian, or Nolo) and they’ll absolutely tell you I’m as pessimistic as they come when it comes to OSU. I genuinely think this team is special and look forward to this season proving it.
• Yes Bama lost its #1 QB, #1 RB, and #1 WR but there are pro teams that probably wouldn’t score on their D this year.
• When in doubt I went SEC > everyone else. See: Carolina, South and State, Mississippi.
• I don’t really think there’s any way this LSU team finishes in the top 10 with their current QB debacle and ridiculous schedule.
• I’ve been riding Mississippi State all summer. Unfortunately they have to go to Auburn, Athens, and Little Rock plus host LSU, Bama, and Carolina. Not sure Dan Mullen is that good.
• Obviously I’m selling high on A&M. I don’t know how to feel about this team. Even Florida is embarrassed of their schedule (they don’t leave the state until late October), but I can’t put my trust in Tannehill just yet. If they beat OSU in week 4 then just copy paste this entire post to pistolsfiringblog@gmail.com. Thanks!
• How bad is the Big East?
• It’s weird to see Ohio State, USC, and Florida in the bottom half and Texas nowhere to be found.
• I’m buying into the Brady Hoke hype in Ann Arbor.
• I wanted to put Tulsa in my 25 slot pretty bad just to get 3 Oklahoma teams in the top 25 but I can’t do it, not after this.

So there you have it, the first Pistols Firing BlogPoll. And here are the composite results from the rest of the bloggers. Obviously they aren’t as bullish on OSU as I am. Give me some feedback in the comments and I’ll revise as we go along.