Blog Poll Draft, comments welcome

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	--
2	Texas	--
3	Oklahoma	--
4	Florida	--
5	Penn State	--
6	Southern Cal	--
7	Texas Tech	--
8	Utah	--
9	Boise State	--
10	Ohio State	2
11	TCU	2
12	Cincinnati	4
13	Ball State	2
14	Oklahoma State	4
15	Oregon	3
16	Missouri	2
17	Georgia Tech	3
18	Brigham Young	1
19	Georgia	8
20	Boston College	1
21	Michigan State	2
22	Oregon State	5
23	Mississippi	1
24	Florida State	2
25	Virginia Tech	1

Dropped Out: Iowa (#25).

We've hit a dangerous time in the Blogpoll... actual thought is required. We've been asked to post our rationale behind our decision as to whether Oklahoma or Texas should be ranked higher in the Blogpoll...thereby contributing our opinion to the great national debate on the topic.

I have ranked Texas ahead of Oklahoma, as I did last week.

A few points.

It is incredibly close. I really think you are practically flipping a coin.

Let's summarize the situation:

Both teams beat Baylor, Kansas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Missouri.
Oklahoma gets a slight edge in schedule, with defeats over TCU, UC, and (lesser) Washington and Chattanooga, as compared to Texas beating Rice, Florida Atlantic, UTEP and Arkansas.

Now we get to the good stuff.

Oklahoma beat Texas Tech (by tons), and Texas didn't beat them at all.

And, on the other side of the argument, of course, Texas beat Oklahoma, neutral field.

Here's my rationale:

• The charge of the Blog poll is to evaluate the quality of the season.
• One of the things I hate most about the mainstream poll is their focus on margin of victory and on recent results as opposed to past results.
• If you're going to rate the quality of the season, and compare two teams who are very, very close, I think you have to give head to head precedence.

Now, I know what comes next.

What about Texas Tech? By that logic, they should be ahead of Texas. I believe Texas is stronger because they have quality wins over OK, OK-State and Missouri, while Tech has only beaten Texas and Oklahoma State. And, as pitiful as Texas's non-conference schedule was, Tech's was even more pitiful.

Its splitting hairs. But, I think Texas has shown itself to be the better team in the only unambiguous format available.