New top 25... Now that the Pac 10 agrees with me, anyone care to recant?

Rumor has it there was a trade proposed whereby West Virginia would drop this Saturday's game at East Carolina, Auburn would do the same for the Buffalo game and the Mountaineers and Tigers would play while ECU and the Bulls also would go at it.

The trade was nixed, however, when Beefalo coach Turner Gill pushed for a guaranteed payday of $2 million. (Read the late-August NY Times story and you'll get the joke.)

But hey, maybe next Saturday, Sept. 30, will work out nicely. WVU is free that day. Any chance No. 6 Michigan drops Minnesota that day to play host to the Mountaineers?

 

Jesus man, The two best teams in the SEC duke it out, and none of them gets a look in? I mean, the SEC is only the toughest conference top to bottom in the country.

Auburn is a strong No.2, and if it gets through its remaining schedule, which would mean beating at least four ranked teams plus the Iron Bowl, they have to be in the title game.

 

Only because they think it is... A lot of teams get voted in the top 25 out of force of habit.

 

The top of the SEC is damn good, but there's not much of a middle and the bottom of the SEC sucks as bad as any conference in major conference in the country.

That said, I think Auburn deserves to be No. 2 and I think its 7-3 win over LSU was more impressive than what USC did to Nebraska.

 

You know what I love about all this? The way people are propping up WVa not two damn years after everyone in the world was justifying leaving an undefeated SEC team out of the national title game by criticizing that team's strength of schedule. Just serves as a great reminder of how absolutely insane this entire process is when you consider the arguments you have to make to justify your poll each week.

Political and Muslim threads aside, we're a rather sane bunch most of the time. Why is it we seem to lose our damn minds when it comes to these polls? Think about what you're doing here. I mean, really think about it. And then answer this: Does this shit make any sense?

 

Yes, it does, if you don't put too much thought into it. Don't overanalyze things, rate teams as you will, the season tends to answer the questions we all have from the first week.

We're three weeks into the season, and we're arguing who should be ranked where already. We don't know who could be the next success story (think Penn State) or flop (think Tennessee). All the bickering, all the arguing we do right now is pretty much pointless conversation. For all the debate on Louisville or West Virginia, we can't say who's going to win that game on Nov. 2. Auburn could run the table, but then no one's ever a lock to do that the SEC.

Forget projecting where teams should be if they ran the table since we don't and won't know that information for months now. Instead, judge teams as to how they are now, how they play now. Do that, and it's going to be a lot easier to sift through the teams in January and decide who deserves to be where.

That is, unless, we have 2004 redux with two powers in the BCS title game (USC, Oklahoma), another snubbed (Auburn) and yet another school that never got a chance to prove itself against a powerhouse when the BCS did its lineup (Utah). And then we can argue this all over again.

 

I don't know, oz, seems rather insane to me. A whole board full of people trying to figure out which teams are better without the one element you really need to make that decision -- those teams actually playing each other.

There's not a team in the top 10 right now that's not a blown call or missed block away from beating any of the other teams in the top 10. And yet, we're trying to rank 'em.

 

Ooooo, Oz ... I don't think even I can be thinking in THAT vein right now.

 

Well, I was going on 2005 -- Penn State went to the Orange and Tennessee went home. Obviously, Penn State won't be what it was last season, but they're still OK. Point is, teams can and will come from nowhere each season.

 

This year it's K-State. Take it to the bank.

 

Um, yeah. :

 

K-State can win the Big 12 North and championship for all I care.