Final BlogPoll

Below is my final BlogPoll ballot of the season. You can find the full poll by clicking thru here to CBS Sports.

Unlike last year, where I gritted my teeth and went with Utah in the top spot, I went with the status quo- crowning Alabama. I had no problem putting undefeated Boise State second though. It is a grown up program that does its best to schedule aggressively. It has whipped enough BCS teams to legitimize both the program and an undefeated campaign.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Florida	1
3	Boise State	2
4	Texas	2
5	Ohio State	3
6	TCU	2
7	Brigham Young	3
8	Iowa	3
9	Penn State	4
10	Cincinnati	4
11	Oregon	4
12	Georgia Tech	3
13	Virginia Tech	2
14	LSU	2
15	Utah	3
16	Nebraska	3
17	Miami (Florida)	3
18	Oregon State	1
19	Arizona	3
20	Central Michigan	4
21	Mississippi
22	Wisconsin
23	Texas Tech
24	Pittsburgh
25	Southern Cal
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Oklahoma State (#16), Stanford (#20), West Virginia (#21), East Carolina (#23), Houston (#25).

For accountability’s sake, here is my pre-season ballot. Not bad- Florida, Texas and the Crimson Tide all performed as predicted. Picked the right C-USA champion: East Carolina. No outright misses in the Top 12- harder to do then you think.

My touted pre-season surprise team was in fact a nice surprise. Perhaps my “12” ranking was too aggressive- but Miami did return to the national conversation this year and won some big games.

The biggest miss? Cincinnati is totally absent- mostly due to my prejudiced against the Big East. I thought Pitt would win the League- and they arguably should have beaten the Bearcats. I still think a lot of the Bearcats success is Big East based. I’m not entirely sure they’d win five League games in the SEC. So I’ll take that lump.

Similarly with Mississippi. Obviously, I ranked them too high pre-season. But, I’m not entirely sure they aren’t one of the top twelve teams is the country.

I don’t know what I was thinking with Illinois and Notre Dame. The Illini just could not get out of their own way- decent wins over Michigan and Minnesota, decent games with Fresno and Cincinnati. But the defense was a mess and Juice Williams had a bad year.