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This week's BlogPoll, sorted by the best average teams in America

By Kevan Lee
Mike DiNovo-US PRESSWIRE

With the regular season in the books, we can now gaze upon my BlogPoll and see just how rational and accurate everything became once I had a year's worth of data to balance everything out. Wait. Northern Illinois is No. 4?! You moron!

OK, so it's not perfect. But it was certainly a fun ride from beginning to end. Remember that time I had Boise State in the Top Five? After they had failed to score an offensive touchdown in two games? Ah, good times. Thanks for all the tiebreaker suggestions throughout the year and for not disowning me for turning in a wack ballot every week.

For those of you late to the party, here's a recap of my BlogPoll methodology.

My Top 25 operates under the assumption that all FBS football teams are equal because, if they weren't, the NCAA obviously wouldn't group them all into the same classification. That would just make no sense.

Therefore, to choose the best from the FBS, I am building my BlogPoll based on one very big factor: Wins over fellow FBS teams. When ties happen within my standings (and they happen A LOT), I will do the tie-breaking based on a new stat every week, like, say, points allowed or Dairy Queens per capita. You know, real scientific stuff.

This week's tie-breaking method is a two-parter.

First, I had to find a way to work conference championship games into my equation. I decided it would be unfair to count conference championship wins in the total for Real Wins. Not every conference has a championship game, thereby robbing those teams of an extra win in my BlogPoll. So instead, I gave conference championship game winners the first tiebreaker (hence Northern Illinois at No. 4).

The second tiebreaker is an average of a team's ranking in total offense and total defense. Total average ranking? Sure, let's call it that.

Notable:

  • There were several teams tied with eight Real Wins, but I only needed two eight-win teams to complete my Top 25. There just so happened to be two eight-win teams that won conference championship games: Florida State and Tulsa.
  • Go figure Louisiana Tech. They have the No. 2 offense in the country and the No. 124 (last) defense.
  • In case you're only interested in where Boise State ranks and too lazy to read the table below, the Broncos were No. 77 in total offense and No. 9 in total defense for a total average of No. 43.

  • Regarding the main statistic used to create my Top 25 - wins over fellow FBS teams, four schools finished without any. Those non-winners were Akron, Kansas, New Mexico State, and Southern Miss. Of those, only Southern Miss had both no FBS wins and no wins of any kind.

The complete Top 25 table is below.

Team Total Wins FCS Wins Real Wins O D Avg
1 Notre Dame 12 12 49 6 27.5
2 Ohio State 12 12 48 36 42.0
3 Alabama 11 1 10 * 40 1 20.5
4 Northern Illinois 11 1 10 * 15 35 25.0
5 Stanford 10 10 * 85 21 53.0
6 Oregon 11 1 10 4 47 25.5
7 Georgia 11 1 10 27 27 27.0
8 Boise State 10 10 77 9 43.0
9 Kansas State 11 1 10 55 43 49.0
10 Florida 11 1 10 104 5 54.5
11 Kent State 11 1 10 75 81 78.0
12 Utah State 10 1 9 26 15 20.5
13 Nebraska 10 1 9 24 23 23.5
14 Oklahoma 10 1 9 10 44 27.0
15 San Jose St 10 1 9 30 28 29.0
16 Louisville 10 1 9 47 25 36.0
17 Clemson 10 1 9 9 75 42.0
18 LSU 10 1 9 80 8 44.0
19 UCLA 9 9 20 73 46.5
20 South Carolina 10 1 9 89 12 50.5
21 UCF 9 9 60 45 52.5
22 Louisiana Tech 9 9 2 124 63.0
23 Ball State 9 9 22 104 63.0
24 Florida State 10 2 8 * 23 2 12.5
25 Tulsa 9 1 8 * 25 33 29.0

Got a suggestion for a tie-breaking procedure? I'm all ears.

Got a beef with the way I do my polling? Beef away in the comments.

Got some ways to make this Top 25 better? Please help. I'm easily swayed.