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BLOGPOLL TOP 25: Red Raiders Rising, Mountaineers Reeling

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Tim Heitman-US PRESSWIRE - Presswire

BracketCat unveils his Week 7 SB Nation BlogPoll ballot for comment and feedback.

With AP No. 3 and AP No. 5 losing for the second straight week, I guess we can dub it Shakeup Saturday No. 2 in retrospect. It didn't feel quite as insane as the previous Saturday, mind you, but it still made things a little crazy.

I continued my résumé balloting approach, with a few minor tweaks to take into account both recent developments and re-evaluated wins or losses from earlier in the season.

Thus, not all moves were a reaction to Saturday's events. Some of them merely were readjustments from the previous ballot based on modifications to my ranking system.

Scroll down for my Week 7 SB Nation BlogPoll ballot:

As I did last week, I'll tackle these in order of tiers.

Florida: The Gators remain No. 1 with two wins over ranked teams (LSU and Texas A&M), with LSU being the highest-ranked scalp any team in my ballot has claimed to date.

K-State: Although the Wildcats have just one win over a ranked team (Oklahoma) who's ranked just below Florida's best scalp, the win came on the road and gained major steam last weekend. Plus, Iowa State is just out of the poll.

Notre Dame and Alabama: The Irish jump the Tide by virtue of their win over Stanford, their best to date. Both teams have dominant wins over Michigan, so that's a wash. The Tide have more road wins, but they're over bad teams.

Undefeated teams who haven't beat a currently ranked team yet: Oregon State still has the best résumé of these four. Oregon can win its first true road game this week at Arizona State. I'm still being generous with the other two.

One-loss teams with a win over a currently ranked team: Here's how I prioritized them, using AP rankings to determine "best" through "worst" wins and losses:

  1. LSU: best win (South Carolina), best loss (@Florida)
  2. South Carolina: second-best win (Georgia), third-best loss (@LSU)
  3. Oklahoma: fifth-best win (@Texas Tech), second-best loss (K-State)
  4. Texas Tech: fourth-best win (West Virginia), fourth-best loss (Oklahoma)
  5. Florida State: third-best win (Clemson), worst loss (@N.C. State)

Big East bloc: I'm using the eyeball test a little since none of these have beat a ranked team yet (or really any good teams at all), but Rutgers just looks a little better to me than Louisville, so I moved the Knights to the top here.

One-loss teams with no wins over currently ranked teams: I probably had Georgia and Texas A&M too high last week (and Florida State too low, but sometimes I overreact like that), so they slide back into this pack. Since none of these teams have a "signature" win, I basically just ordered them by the ranking of the opponent that beat them:

  1. Texas A&M: AP No. 3 Florida
  2. Georgia: @ AP No. 9 South Carolina
  3. Clemson: @ AP No. 12 Florida State
  4. West Virginia: @ AP No. 18 Texas Tech (badly)
  5. Louisiana Tech: vs. AP No. 20 Texas A&M
  6. USC: @ AP No. 22 Stanford
  7. TCU: Iowa State (receiving votes)
  8. Northwestern: @Penn State (receiving votes)

Ohio: Just not a very impressive team at this point, but if you're still undefeated in October, you get this token spot.

The waiting list: Michigan and Stanford are ineligible until they become bowl-eligible. Boise State and Tulsa won't get in until either A) I run out of other one-loss teams to rank or B) they actually beat a BCS team this season.

The first team out is Arizona State, who is being penalized for actually losing to the Missouri Tigers. The Sun Devils must baptize the stink of that loss away by beating Oregon on Thursday night (for which I will be rooting intensely.)

The rest of the one-loss team waiting list (Note: None of these really belong in the poll.) looks something like Western Kentucky, Toledo, Kent State, Louisiana, UTSA, Northern Illinois and Nevada.

The "true" waiting list, on which all teams are awaiting bowl eligibility in order to be in my ballot, reads something like Michigan, Iowa State, Texas, Stanford, Nebraska, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Penn State and N.C. State.

That's really not an impressive list. The bottom end of this thing is threatening to get ugly in the near future.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

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