Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:13 pm EDT
Now in its fourth year, the Blog Poll is a weekly effort of dozens of college football-centric Web sites representing a wide array of schools under the oversight of founder/manager/guru Brian Cook at MGoBlog. Its goal is to provide a more rigorous check on the mainstream polls that actually, like, count toward the mythical championship, and to put all biases in the open. But mainly, it’s fun.
This week’s poll is brought to you by rap supergroup Big Tymers, which reminds readers,
Ooh, Big Tymers in a private jet
Got the head of Universal to sign the check
Meanwhile Ludacris is out arrangin rovers
Every coast watch out cuz the South is takin' over
Uhh
As always, the criteria here is not "strength" or projection, but resumé, actual on-field accomplishment to date. This week, that's composed of four factors: record (obviously), "quality" wins, overall strength of schedule (as tallied by Jeff Sagarin, for the sake of time and consistency) and overall margin of victory.
Put it all together, and you get -- for now anyway -- ESSSSSSS EEEEEEE SEEEEEEEE. Four weeks in, the SEC occupies spots two through six, and the distinction isn't arbitrary: Florida (over Miami and Tennessee) and Georgia (South Carolina and Arizona State) both have two fairly quality wins by mostly wide margins, while LSU (over Auburn) and Alabama (by a huge margin over Clemson) have two of the strongest wins of the early season; after destroying Arkansas, Alabama is only dinged by a lazy effort against Tulane, where the Gators, Bulldogs and Tigers have appropriately dominated their cruise control games. Vanderbilt is a tougher call because the Commodores don't have a great win, and there's essentially no gap between Vandy at six and Wisconsin at twelve.
That group of teams, between Vandy and Wisconsin, has been winning impressively over middle of the pack competition like Washington, Cincinnati, Ole Miss, UCLA and Michigan, none of which we can make a strong judgment about at this point. As opposed to, say, Auburn or Ohio State, which don't appear here because neither has a real quality win to its name yet, but both of which we can still classify as valuable wins for now (yes, I recognize the inconsistency in that assumption, but these are the compromises we make).
East Carolina is the first team this season to appear on my ballot with a loss, a bad loss at that, but the Pirates' quality wins over Virginia Tech and West Virginia still carry some considerable weight, even as the Mountaineers are rapidly losing value. Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech are in the same boat: both have a pair of decent wins, and close, acceptable losses that don't sink them completely.
Beyond that, there's a string of Big 12 teams (and Tulsa) with perfect records and impressive margins of victory, but not much substance to their style -- between Texas, Texas Tech, Missouri and Nebraska, the only win of substance is Missouri's shootout with Illinois, which most recently struggled to put away UL-Lafayette. Even with the Illini on the board, the Tigers' strength of schedule is near rock-bottom according to Sagarin and will take a few Big 12 victims to put them in the upper echelon here (though I fully expect Mizzou to get there).
Caveat: In retrospect, I'd probably bump Missouri considerably and move South Florida in front of Boise State and Colorado. Sorry, Bulls -- I'll get you back, as long as you keep winning.
There's still time for all that to sort itself out as the data mounts. As always, I'll begin from scratch next week, when everything will be completely different.
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Photo of Harry Coleman via Getty Images.
Dr. Saturday is a college football blog edited by Matt Hinton. Email him tips and feedback.

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17 Comments
1 - 17 of 17
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Have you seen the horrific QB play of just about every top SEC team? And then you mean to tell me that a USC team that has play makers on both sides of the ball and at every skill position, and an NFL caliber line backing corp couldn't hang with such SEC luminaries as Tennessee, Auburn, South Carolina, MSU, Arkansas etc etc?
At BEST there are only 3 teams in the SEC who could make a game of it against USC. Those being LSU, Georgia and Florida. Florida would have to hope their secondary could stop USC, LSU would have to hope that one of their shaky QBs wouldn't kill them, and Georgia would probably need to find someone besides Greene and Moreno who could make a play.
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M B, I disagree. It's too early in the season for me to make an accurate judgment about where USC stacks up, and the same goes for the undefeated SEC teams. We've only played four games, and there's a lot left to be decided. Making judgments like that after four games is just silly.
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arkansas - won 50-14
arkansas - won 70-17
auburn - won 24-0
Well, uh, i guess auburn only lost by 24...
Fact is that USC does much better in ooc games than in conference. They would dominate anywhere.
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Maryland: beat Cal by 8 (solid), beat Eastern Michigan by 27 (meh, it's Eastern), beat Delaware by 7 (not good), lost to Middle Tennessee State by 10 (horrid).
Cal: beat MSU by 7 (solid), beat Washington State by 63 (decent - I know WSU is terrible, but they're better than EMU and Cal slapped them silly), lost to Maryland by 8 (bad).
Even with Maryland beating Cal, Cal has done more to this point in the season. And it's not particularly close.
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The SEC is the best conference, but not by anywhere near as much as you think.
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"Heck, I bet even Tennessee could beat USC. The SEC is the best conference in college football, period. "
Somebody make sure this guy stays away from Vegas!!!
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Fair enough... Thanks for the clarification. And for the record... Doc, the comment wasn't geared toward you. I first saw the poll, then posted. Not a wise decision (I know). For those (if any) offended, I apologize.
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1 - 17 of 17