Sorry for the delay, which means that this is our final ballot for the week, not a draft ballot. In other words: You can’t call me an idiot in a vain attempt to sway my opinions. Which, I assure you, you will. Seriously, I went way off the charts this week. Don’t worry, eventually we’ll end up back in the middle. But for now, I’m still clinging to my ridiculous misconceptions.

quebecpenspinning Ballot – Week 5

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	–
2	Ohio St. Buckeyes	–
3	Boise St. Broncos	–
4	Stanford Cardinal	4
5	Arkansas Razorbacks	4
6	TCU Horned Frogs	–
7	Oregon Ducks	–
8	Miami Hurricanes	7
9	Arizona Wildcats	-4
10	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-6
11	Florida Gators	-1
12	Auburn Tigers	11
13	Utah Utes	-1
14	Oklahoma Sooners	-1
15	Iowa Hawkeyes	1
16	Wisconsin Badgers	3
17	Penn St. Nittany Lions	–
18	Michigan Wolverines	2
19	Michigan St. Spartans	-1
20	LSU Tigers	1
21	South Carolina Gamecocks	-7
22	Nevada Wolf Pack	–
23	Northwestern Wildcats	2
24	N.C. State Wolfpack	–
25	Temple Owls	–
Dropouts: Texas Longhorns, West Virginia Mountaineers

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

Defending the indefensible: We’ll start with Arkansas at 5. Last week, I had them at 9, and this week, the consensus is that they’re somewhere around 15. Why? I’m seriously asking this question to you, readers. Explain to me how any football team that takes the virtually unanimous #1 team–one that looked simply unbeatable in rolling through it’s non-conference schedule–to the brink shouldn’t be ranked right up there with said #1 team. For 55 minutes, Arkansas was a better team than the #1 team in the country. To me, that’s a top-5 team, not one you rank below Utah or LSU or Auburn. I’m serious: is there anyone who thinks one of those three teams could do what Arkansas did last week?

Texas is unranked and for a damn good reason. Did you watch that game? Of course not. But you saw the final score, and that’s all that matters. Texas got beat down by a UCLA team that embodies the term “mediocre.” And Texas hasn’t been so impressive that I can overlook that pitiful loss. I’ve been ranking them lower than the average each week because I never bought in to the hype, and they’ll get no sympathy from me.

Other than that, I don’t think anything is too out of the ordinary. I still can’t make heads or tails of the middle of the Big Ten–I honestly have no idea who would win if there was a round-robin tournament featuring everybody but Ohio State on the ballot.  Temple gets a vote at #25–giving the MAC one more team on this ballot than the Big East has–not out of sympathy, or to make Penn State look better, but because I honestly think they would win the Big East if they were in it. They were a mirror image of Penn State, if Penn State had to throw away the top half of their recruiting classes every week. But they were feisty, disciplined, and looked good against a Penn State team that I still think highly of.