Black Heart Gold Pants Ballot - Week 1
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 2 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 3 | North Carolina Tar Heels | -- |
| 4 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | -- |
| 5 | Connecticut Huskies | -- |
| 6 | Arizona St. Sun Devils | -- |
| 7 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | -- |
| 8 | Missouri Tigers | -- |
| 9 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs | -- |
| 10 | Utah Utes | -- |
| 11 | Louisiana Ragin Cajuns | -- |
| 12 | Purdue Boilermakers | -- |
| 13 | Kansas St. Wildcats | -- |
| 14 | Texas Tech Red Raiders | -- |
| 15 | Western Kentucky Hilltoppers | -- |
| 16 | Utah State Aggies | -- |
| 17 | New Mexico Lobos | -- |
| 18 | USC Trojans | -- |
| 19 | Central Florida Knights | -- |
| 20 | Temple Owls | -- |
| 21 | Fresno St. Bulldogs | -- |
| 22 | BYU Cougars | -- |
| 23 | New Mexico St. Aggies | -- |
| 24 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 25 | LSU Tigers | -- |
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
For those who are new here, a BHGP Blogpoll primer: Preseason ratings mean nothing. Predictions mean nothing. Expectations are meaningless. Anyone who mentions an "eye test" is summarily executed. All that matters to us is who you played, whether you won, and by how much you beat them. In week one, that basically makes the poll an exercise in margin of victory, with slight adjustments for FCS opponents and defensive aptitude. As time moves on and we get more information, the margin of victory matters less and the strength of schedule more. For the original concept, see this poll from four years ago.
For example, let's look at this ballot's top team. Oklahoma State defeated Savannah State 84-0; even with a reduction for the FCS opposition, that's enough to take the top spot. Do we expect Oklahoma State to keep blowing out opponents by 80+ points and maintain the top position? Of course not, but what we expect doesn't matter. All that matters is what has happened, and what has happened makes the Cowboys #1.
Technically, Alabama and LSU are tied for 24th, but we don't have that option, so we flipped a coin. In the future, we fully expect Alabama's 27-point win over Michigan to carry more weight than LSU's 27-point win over North Texas, but until Michigan wins some games and North Texas does what North Texas pretty much always does, we aren't making any assumptions. Nevertheless, expect wholesale changes next week.
BHGPoll Games of the Week:
#19 Central Florida at #4 Ohio St. -- UCF always seems to make the poll early and, after about four weeks of looking dangerous, drop about five straight. Ohio State is going to try to bring that on a bit early.
#12 Purdue at #7 Notre Dame -- Fainting Irish. OMHR. Throw out the records. Wake up the echoes. They'll both play December bowl games.
#10 Utah at #16 Utah State -- This game is being played on Friday, so that you can watch it. And watch it you should, because Utah-Utah St. is war. Take Iowa-ISU, add the increased animosity and arrogance that naturally comes from one program being upwardly mobile and the other in the WAC, with the only thing tying them together being geography and mutual hatred of BYU. Utah is a weird place, man.