FOFC/SGS College Football Poll, results from Poll #3 (9/27/2005)

[cartman]

Hello all,

Thanks for the quick response on getting the votes in! Next week will be a bit of a repeat, since there is once again a Tuesday night game. However, there shouldn't be any Monday night college games... (looks out the corner of his eye at the Atlantic)

There was a little movement and shuffling in the Top 10, with the former Top 10 Louisville team dropping completely out of the poll! Once again we had a tie at #25, but the teams aren't playing each other this week.


Team Votes Prev. Upcoming game
1. USC(23) 613 1 at #13 Arizona St.
2. Texas(1) 592 2 at Missouri
3. Virginia Tech 561 5 at #25 West Virginia
4. Florida 548 T3 at #14 Alabama
5. Georgia 515 6 Bye
6. Florida State(1) 496 7 vs. Syracuse
T7. Ohio State 451 9 Bye
T7. Tennessee 451 10 vs. Mississippi
9. Miami 398 11 vs. South Florida
10. LSU 380 T3 at Mississippi St.
11. California 334 13 vs. Arizona
12. Michigan State 325 19 vs. Michigan
13. Arizona State 283 16 vs. #1 USC
14. Alabama 257 20 vs. #4 Florida
15. Notre Dame 256 18 at #23 Purdue
16. Texas Tech 221 17 vs. Kansas
17. Wisconsin 192 NR vs. Indiana
18. UCLA 166 22 vs. Washington
19. Boston College 163 T25 vs. Ball State
T20. Minnesota 153 NR at Penn State
T20. Virginia 153 24 at Maryland
22. Iowa State 120 21 at Nebraska
23. Purdue 98 12 vs. #15 Notre Dame
24. Georgia Tech 64 15 Bye
T25. West Virginia 51 NR vs. #3 Virginia Tech
T25. Auburn 51 NR vs. South Carolina

Dropped out:
#8 Louisville;#14 Michigan;;#23 Iowa;#T25. Clemson

Also Receiving votes:
Penn State 50;Louisville 45;Vanderbilt 26;Michigan 21;
UTEP 18;Clemson 16;Texas A&M 12;Wyoming 11;South Florida 8;
Nebraska 7;Utah 7;Indiana 5;Oregon 5;Colorado 1

Thanks to the following FOFCers who voted this week:

bronconick
bsak16
cartman
Cuckoo
dacman
digamma
duckman
Easy Mac
General Mike
George W Bush
Huckleberry
JeeberD
JonInMiddleGA
kingfc22
kingnebwsu
Neuqua
ntndeacon
SnDvls
solecismic.com
sterlingice
Sublime_2
timmynausea
tucker342
vexroid
VPI97

[kingnebwsu]

Thanks for the continued work on this :)

Penn State was in my top 25 almost by default. If they keep winning though, I'll have to keep moving them up. We'll see if they can keep it up vs better teams than...northwestern ;)

[cartman]

Hey, maybe we have a chance to eventually be part of the BCS! :D

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/colleges/12750059.htm

Harris poll has instant credibility problem
BY JON WILNER

Knight Ridder Newspapers

SAN JOSE, Calif. - (KRT) - Say this for the inaugural Harris Interactive top-25 poll, the newest addition to the Bowl Championship Series formula: It could have been worse.

Given the makeup of the 114-member panel, I half-expected to see USC ranked fifth when the poll was released Sunday.

Instead, the Trojans were No. 1 and the rest of the top 25 looked pretty good.

But there was cause for alarm with "other teams receiving votes."

Illinois, which is 2-2 and lost 61-14 on Saturday, received enough votes to rank 38th with 13 points.

Arizona (1-2), whose lone victory is over Northern Arizona, had 10 points.

And Western Athletic Conference cellar-dweller Idaho, which is 0-4, had five points. Imagine where the Vandals might be ranked had they actually won a game.

"We were surprised to see them," WAC assistant commissioner Dave Chaffin said.

But the Harris folks were not surprised - and that alone should scare BCS officials.

The Harris poll operates like The Associated Press poll: the No.1 team receives 25 points, the No. 2 receives 24 points and so on. According to the Idaho Statesman, a Harris official said one voter had ranked the Vandals 20th.

"It was a random selection of the overall body," Harris spokeswoman Nancy Wong said. "We have to decide if it's acceptable, and in our opinion, it is."

It's acceptable for someone to vote for an 0-4 team?

"We have to be confident that the panel we established can be relied on."

But isn't there some kind of safety net - the AP has one - that alerts poll operators of an inconsistent ballot?

"We have a verification system in place. . . .Our results were fully validated this week."

So no one thought twice about seeing Idaho on a ballot?

"We look at it like you would other surveys, that the likelihood of the results may not always be what you expect."

Considering that the Harris poll is one-third of the BCS formula, we could be looking at a real mess come bowl-selection time.

Whoever voted for Idaho - Harris isn't saying - will help determine which teams play for the national championship. That's even scarier than Watson Brown voting in last year's Coaches' poll. (Brown, a coach at Alabama-Birmingham, is the brother of Texas Coach Mack Brown.)

BCS officials picked Harris to operate a top-25 poll after the AP dropped out following last year's Cal-Texas controversy. The 11 major conferences and independents submitted 300 names. Each conference got 10 randomly selected voters. The panel is a mix of former coaches, players and administrators and current media members.

Harris did not release its first poll until Sunday in a commendable attempt to limit the influence of the preseason polls.

But BCS officials made one gigantic mistake: They allowed Harris to keep ballots private until the final regular-season poll. It's the same courtesy afforded the coaches who vote in the USA Today top 25, but they have competitive reasons for wanting their ballots private. The Harris panelists do not. (The AP makes its ballots public.)

According to Chaffin, no one in the WAC's voting bloc is affiliated with Idaho. So which member of this dubious panel voted for the Vandals?

_Perhaps it was Carolina Panther Brentson Buckner, the only active NFLer on the Harris poll. Buckner, who played at Clemson, publishes his ballot on his Web site. A few weeks ago, he had unproven Oregon State 12th even though the Beavers weren't ranked in the AP poll. Buckner then dropped the Beavers the following week - after they beat Boise State.

_Perhaps it was one of the panelists to whom former Arizona coach John Mackovic referred to when he wrote in the Palm Springs Desert Sun: "To tell the truth, I did not know a couple of them were still alive."

_Perhaps it was Kevin Duhe, a former player at Northeast Louisiana who now serves as a manager for the Blue Bell Ice Cream Co.

We can be sure of one thing: It wasn't Jason Rash who voted for the Vandals.

Rash, an executive for an Atlanta masonry company, was on the original Harris panel but resigned after it was revealed that his only connection to college football is as the son-in-law of Troy Coach Larry Blakeney.

How `bout that Harris verification system?

[cartman]

bump for the Saturday pre-game crowd.