Below is my ballot for the SBNation BlogPoll Top 25 after the completion of Week One, blissfully ignoring tonight's Miami-Maryland game.
Thanks to those who provided feedback in the "Help Me Vote" FanPost I threw up yesterday. Your feed back was quite helpful. What it did convince me to do was to keep Oklahoma and Alabama at #1 and #2, respectively, despite the fact that I had believed that my "wildly fluctuating" methodology would have dictated that I put either Boise State or LSU in the top spot, given their tough opponents. I realized that doing so, presumably to the benefit of Boise State, whom I almost ranked #1, would have been to do what I've critiqued Boise-bashers of doing in the past: penalizing a clearly superior group of athletes based solely on the mediocre set of opponents they've played.
That being said, I did my best to have the this week's rankings reflect, to the greatest extent possible, what we actually saw (or, much more frequently, read about) in Week One. I deliberately didn't have my Preseason Top 25 in front of me when I did this week's rankings, though of course I more or less remembered roughly where I had teams ranked previously, so it wasn't completely bias-free. Since lots of teams this week were playing less-than-stellar opposition, I tended to give the benefit of the doubt to teams which had defeated at least marginally-difficult competition.
As a result, I have teams like Northwestern, South Florida and BYU entering the Top 25 for going on the road and beating BCS teams. (And yes, I did see parts of the BYU game, and it was dreadful to watch, but they won in SEC territory at the end of the day, and that counts for something.) I wouldn't fret too much if I have particular teams overvalued or undervalued based on one week's results. I anticipate that this will be highly fluid over the next several weeks, and I fully anticipate teams like Mississippi State (which I don't anticipate to be where they are at the end of the season) to demonstrate where they really should be in short order.
And with that, your Top 25:
Ballot - Week 2
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 3 | Boise St. Broncos |
 11 |
| 4 | LSU Tigers |
 -1 |
| 5 | Stanford Cardinal |
-1 |
| 6 | Texas A&M Aggies |
6 |
| 7 | Wisconsin Badgers |
1 |
| 8 | Florida St. Seminoles |
-2 |
| 9 | Virginia Tech Hokies |
1 |
| 10 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs |
11 |
| 11 | Nebraska Cornhuskers |
-2 |
| 12 | Arkansas Razorbacks |
3 |
| 13 | Ohio St. Buckeyes |
11 |
| 14 | Oregon Ducks |
-9 |
| 15 | South Carolina Gamecocks |
-4 |
| 16 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys |
-9 |
| 17 | West Virginia Mountaineers |
6 |
| 18 | Baylor Bears | -- |
| 19 | Florida Gators |
3 |
| 20 | Michigan St. Spartans |
-4 |
| 21 | South Florida Bulls | -- |
| 22 | BYU Cougars |
3 |
| 23 | Northwestern Wildcats | -- |
| 24 | USC Trojans | -- |
| 25 | Missouri Tigers |
-6 |
| Dropouts: TCU Horned Frogs, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Georgia Bulldogs, Auburn Tigers | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "