Week Four BlogPoll Ballot

A couple of quick notes for those of you not familiar with resume voting:

1) This is not a power poll.  I don't think number one would necessarily beat number two or even number twenty-five.

2) This is not a predictor of future success.

The only thing this is based on is performance to date.  Bonus points given for road wins.  No points are rewarded for playing against terrible competition.  At this stage in the season, one big win can send you soaring, as nobody's body of work is that strong.  At this point in the season, there is a lot of room for respectful disagreement due to the severe lack of data points.  Your early polls are almost by a rule going to be worse than those later in the season, but help make this one as good as possible by dropping your college football knowledge in the comments.   

Specific thoughts and some rough tiers after the jump:

You could put Oklahoma number one after their big win at Florida State and I wouldn't be upset, but I think the combination of holding down Oregon's offense and then the big Thursday night win in Starksville gives the slight edge to LSU.

The two USC's have combined for a bunch of very nice wins.  The Trojans have opened up with three wins over respectable teams at home (Minnesota, Utah, Syracuse) while the Gamecocks have blown out East Carolina after a rough start, won between the hedges and survived Navy.  Some people might ding USC East for not blowing out Navy, but those people shouldn't be Notre Dame fans.

Boise State has a couple of very nice road wins, taking care of business in what was essentially was a Georgia home game in Atlanta and then winning in primetime in the Glass Bowl.  Boise probably starts to fall at this point unless everyone else around them starts losing, since they don't really have a marquee game until the Horned Frogs head to Idaho in November.

I've got Alabama relatively low, but their marquee win at Penn State looks a little less exciting after the Nittany Lions barely survived at Temple.  With Arkansas and Florida their next two games, the Tide could be at the top of this thing pretty easily come October.  

Also lacking quality wins so far?  Texas A&M (who can fix that by beating Oklahoma State this Saturday) and Arkansas (Alabama up next).  That issue will be resolved by next week's ballot as well.

Florida (Rocky Top), Stanford (@ Arizona) and Baylor (TCU) are hanging their hats on single wins with a bunch of blowouts of crappy teams filled in around.  

Special duos: South Florida and Michigan (wins over Notre Dame when in a fair and just world they should have lost and no I'm not bitter or anything) and Oregon and Florida State (lost games to tough opponents).