Mr. Bold Comes to his own defense.

I thought, in fact, that being bold was a good thing. Apparently not. But on the blogpoll this week, I was named Mr. Bold, and even though my victory was razor thin and hanging chad induced, I was still called out. So, I feel compelled to defend myself. In the table below, my rankings are listed and compared to the ratings of my fellow bloggers. One by one, I am going to analyze where I see things are why, in cases where our rankings are separated by more than 5-6 spots.

Obviously, the big one here is Penn State. Upon thoughtful review, I will cop to the idea that Georgia and South Carolina should have been ahead of Penn State, and maybe Clemson, but I thought Penn State was good enough to be #6 the week before, and they lost on the road to a much improving Michigan team in a close game. I can't see dropping them into the 20's. Does the blogpoll really think Penn State is worse than Cincinnati and Missouri? And Arizona State?

Now, let's look at some other differences.

Boston College? #10? Based on what? A razor thin win over Wake Forest and a victory over Georgia Tech, who has since lost to Virginia?

South Florida? #15. Based on an upset over an overrated Auburn team? Its a nice story, and if they beat West Virginia tomorrow, I'm in. But they haven't show it. Unless Elon is better than I thought.

Texas #8? They barely beat Central Florida, beat an underachieving TCU team, and that's their quality win.

Rutgers, #12--Buffalo, Navy, Norfolk State. Until I see them play like last year, I don't think they are good enough to say, hey, we haven't played anybody but we're #12.

Kentucky, #14--Kentucky is a nice story, too. But, they beat a Louisville team that was clearly overrated and an Arkansas team with a losing record. I don't think they go this high until they get more quality wins.

Georgia and South Carolina---I will cop to the idea that South Carolina should be ahead of Georgia, since they beat them. But, beyond that, these teams should be ranked higher than the blog poll shows them. The teams rated in front--many of which I have discussed already--have simply not earned their blogpoll ranking. Just as a final point, I think they both have a better case than Wisconsin, which struggled to beat UNLV and the Citadel.

So, that's my defense. Call it bold if you like.

Blog Poll Rank	Team	My Ranking	Diff
1	LSU (37)	1	0
2	Southern Cal (25)	2	0
3	Oklahoma (2)	3	0
4	Florida (1)	4	0
5	West Virginia	5	0
6	California	8	2
7	Ohio State	6	1
8	Texas	15	7
9	Oregon	7	2
10	Boston College	18	8
11	Wisconsin	14	3
12	Rutgers	19	7
13	Clemson	12	1
14	Kentucky	20	6
15	South Florida	22	7
16	Georgia	10	6
17	South Carolina	11	6
18	Missouri	16	2
19	Cincinnati	23	4
20	Virginia Tech	13	7
21	Arizona State	--	5
22	Penn State	9	13
23	Hawaii	24	1
24	Alabama	17	7
25	Purdue	--	1
--	Texas @&M	25	1
	Miami	21	5