Fed up with the random, uneducated polls that the national media churns out every week, we decided to take matters into our hands…by penning a furious personal letter to Myles Brand. When that didn’t work, we decided to start our own poll.

Behold, the Bronco Blogger Top 26 Poll presented by OBNUG and featuring Bronco bloggers, non-Bronco bloggers, and Bronco non-bloggers. We’ll call it the Top 26 Poll for short.

We’ve invited some of the smartest people we know to take part in our little experiment to see if a bunch of fervent college football fans really do know more than the talking heads on the national stage. There are reporters from the local papers, bloggers from the local blogs, and TV personalities from KTVB. Oh, and there’s us, too. To see the complete list of who’s involved, visit the Top 26 Poll homepage.

Each week, we’ll provide a new poll and we’ll also explain one person’s picks. We are nothing if not transparent. OBNUG’s own Kevan Lee gets things started this week.

Without further ado, here is the preseason Top 26 Poll. To view individual selections, download the Top 26 Poll pdf. Enjoy.

1. Georgia (7)
2. USC (4)
3. Florida (1)
4. LSU (3)
5. Ohio State
6. Oklahoma
7. West Virginia
8. Missouri
9. Texas
10. Auburn
11. Clemson
12. Texas Tech
13. Wisconsin
14. Kansas
15. Virginia Tech
16. Arizona State
17. Tennessee
18. Oregon
19. BYU
20. Illinois
21. Penn State
22. South Florida
23. Wake Forest
24. Alabama
25. South Carolina
26. Boston College

Others receiving votes: Pittsburgh, Michigan, Fresno State, Cincinnati, California, Boise State, Hawaii, Colorado, Utah, Oregon State, Rutgers, Nebraska, North Carolina

Kevan’s poll:

1. LSU
2. Georgia
3. USC
4. Missouri
5. Ohio State
6. West Virginia
7. Kansas
8. Oklahoma
9. Virginia Tech
10. Texas
11. Boston College
12. Tennessee
13. Florida
14. Brigham Young
15. Auburn
16. Arizona State
17. Cincinnati
18. Michigan
19. Hawaii
20. Illinois
21. Clemson
22. Texas Tech
23. Oregon
24. Wisconsin
25. Oregon State

Does my poll look familiar? It should, provided you memorized the final AP poll from last season.

That’s right. My poll is the AP poll, team-for-team, ranking-for-ranking.

I am not a fan of preseason polls because they give teams an unfair head start based on hypotheses and guesses. Why is Georgia No. 1 overall? Because they won some games at the end of the year and didn’t graduate a whole lot of people. How is this fair? Answer to rhetorical question: it’s not.

I feel that if we’re going to have a preseason poll that it should be based on something tangible and should reward play on the field. My solution is to make the preseason poll the same as the season-ending poll. This way, at least teams have a chance to do something about their ranking.

As it stands now, the poll is unfair to those teams who don’t look good on paper (insert Utah State joke here). And since when is football played on paper? Let’s get this thing right. I’m sure the Hawaii fans will agree with me.