The Guru's BlogPoll Ballot (Week 13)

This week's BlogPoll ballot, with comments below:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	TCU
2	Alabama	2
3	Florida	3
4	Texas	1
5	Boise State	2
6	Cincinnati	4
7	Oregon	2
8	Ohio State	2
9	Iowa	2
10	Penn State	2
11	Brigham Young	2
12	Georgia Tech	5
13	Pittsburgh	5
14	Houston	1
15	LSU	2
16	USC	2
17	Oregon State	2
18	Virginia Tech	4
19	Miami (Florida)	4
20	Utah	6
21	California
22	Nebraska
23	West Virginia
24	Oklahoma State	8
25	Central Michigan
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Clemson (#20), North Carolina (#21), Temple (#24), Navy (#25).

* Yeah, this is exactly why playing out a championship on ballots is a farce. The top of my ballot is shuffled again once more. Why? Because I have no freaking idea just who is really better than who else. And anyone who claims to definitively and objectively rate one team as better than another is either a liar or a fool.

After next week's SEC championship game, we'll probably have five unbeaten teams that share maybe just a couple of common opponents amongst all of them. You can compare these teams statistically, but with such disparate schedules, that's bordering on meaningless as well.

* So I still have TCU No. 1, even though the Horned Frogs probably will have no shot at the BCS title game. We'll know about Florida and Alabama, and that's all we're going to know. Boise State will be lucky enough to get a BCS bowl berth, but even if the Broncos manage to wallop, say, two-loss Iowa, in the Fiesta Bowl, what exactly does that prove?

* The rest of the ballot is pretty standard fare. It's a freak occurrence that we have six undefeated teams and no one-loss teams. Each of the two-loss teams are on the ballot and all three-loss teams from BCS conferences, save Wisconsin and Rutgers, are on it as well.

* And one additional note to my previous bowl projections: The Orange Bowl will not want a rematch between TCU and Clemson. So if the Tigers win the ACC, look for the Orange Bowl to take the Big East champion, even though it will try everything it can to avoid an ACC-Big East matchup for the third time in four years. This isn't basketball, and that matchup does nothing in terms of TV ratings, attendance or prestige for the bowl.

The real question is, will the Fiesta have the guts to match up two undefeated teams? The answer is no. Because these bowls work together within the framework of the BCS, they'll avoid in any way diminishing or distracting from the BCS championship game.