It’s football week, and I don’t think anyone could be happier than we are here at BlogHawgs. After a brief hiatus to deal with everything from family medical to courtroom dramas to regular Dad Life activities, we are back and ready for action. Jeff, Adam, and I will be here for the next 15 weeks analyzing and agonizing over the college football season.
It all begins of course with a poll. We learned a lot last year thanks to our weekly exercise. The biggest lesson I learned is that it is not very easy to cast a ballot every week. It is virtually impossible to use the same set of criterion each week because the next week could turn your philosophy upside-down. I think we all began to establish a personal “code” to guide us in our weekly deliberations. I can easily say that I am still working on mine.
With this first ballot, I used my preseason predictions to guide the numbers. I went through each BCS conference, the MWC , WAC, Conference USA, and Independents to predict schedules. This was no casual enterprise. The Wife can certainly attest to that.
So my first Select 17 ballot reflects how I expect the teams to finish. That of course is based on the limited knowledge I have about each team heading into their first games. After Week 1 we will have much more information at our disposal, meaning the Week 2 rankings should come a bit more easily. The same can be said for Week 3.
When we hit that first week of October, though, things begin to change. I have a pretty hard-and-fast rule about not ranking a team ahead of another team that has beaten them. Unfortunately that rule sometimes must be broken. So I rationalize and reflect, thinking on how teams evolve over a season – or in some cases devolve. And long about Week 7 or Week 8 it becomes impossible to maintain that rule. Now, if both teams have the same record I will stick to my guns. But I suppose even that “rule” can be negotiated in my own mind as the season goes along.
As I announced over the weekend, Boise St. garnered the top spot on my ballot this week. By Monday night we’ll know whether or not that was a foolish decision. If Virginia Tech can pull the upset (Boise is a 3-point favorite as of Sunday morning), the Hokies will be rewarded and the Broncos penalized appropriately. And I will catch hell from all of you people, but I suspect Adam will be the ringleader. You see, he and I argue more about the polling than anything else. It’s the only time last year (I think) that I legitimately pissed him off during our college football coverage.
The problem is that I love to discuss it. I love to find out why or how other voters create their ballot. And being who I am, I will argue if I don’t agree. I’m looking forward to this season, arguing in public with my fellow voters over their ballots. Hopefully you will find it amusing and at least slightly informative.
It’s game week, folks. Grind away at work, put in the family time early this week, and get ready for a helluva weekend. By Thanksgiving we’ll all wonder how quickly the time passed us by.
