Posts Tagged ‘Washington Huskies’

Here’s my ballot for this week’s CBS Sports BlogPoll Top 25 hosted by — as you might imagine — CBS Sports.

Week 4

Through 19 September 2009

First things first…

No, I have not abandoned the Gate.  No, I am not dead.  No, I have not defected and become a Florida Gators fan.  I have, however, had more on my plate the last few weeks than I really could possibly hope to keep up with.  Thus, I have had to make concessions here and there.  Regular posting on the Gate (as well as commenting across the web) has been one of those areas.  Between trials, funerals, and trips from one end of the State of North Carolina to the other, I have simply been trying to keep my head above water.  To both of you out there who regularly read the Gate, my apologies.  To those of you who accidentally stumbled upon Gate 21 while searching the web for a place from which you could purchase Viagra, well, you’re in the wrong place, but I’ll apologize nonetheless.

Moving right along…

There were a few surprises over the past week in the world of college football, some which I simply did not see coming and others which, while not expected can hardly be said to be earth shattering.  Bearing this in mind, here’s is my BlogPoll Top 25 ballot for the week.  Most of these should be fairly obvious.  Either way, here’s my preliminary ballot:

My Ballot for the Week

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida	–
2	Texas	1
3	Penn State	1
4	Alabama	1
5	California	2
6	Mississippi	–
7	LSU	2
8	Miami (Florida)	2
9	Boise State	1
10	Oklahoma	1
11	Southern Cal	9
12	TCU	–
13	Ohio State	2
14	Iowa	2
15	Pittsburgh	2
16	UCLA	3
17	Georgia	1
18	Notre Dame	2
19	Virginia Tech	4
20	Kansas	1
21	Oklahoma State	1
22	Nebraska	8
23	Cincinnati	1
24	Florida State	NR
25	Michigan	NR
Last week’s ballot

Explanations after the jump…

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Check out the Full Poll Results at:

Team Speed Kills!

Week 1

Through 7 September 2009

Here’s my ballot for this week in the SEC Power Poll, along with an feeble attempt at explaining why I’m such a moron. Not a whole lot of ways to separate between some of the teams this early on, but at least I thought up some excuses for my decisions.

Here they are, my darlins:

What, you were expecting more?

The Rest of the Power Poll

Now that you have wasted your time looking at my ballot, go check out what everybody else is saying over at Team Speed Kills, where the round-up will appear later this week.

Onward and upward …

– So it goes…

Here’s my ballot for this week’s CBS Sports College Football BlogPoll hosted by—as you might imagine—CBS Sports.

Week 10

Through 01 November 2008

With the “power” teams making their claims with increasing volume, the BCS committee is already exploring the option of entering the witness protection program.  It’s looking like 2007 all over again.  Nonetheless, here is my preliminary BlogPoll Top 25 for this week.  Most of these should be fairly obvious.  Either way, here’s my ballot:

My Ballot for the Week

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	1
2	Texas Tech	4
3	Penn State	–
4	Oklahoma	–
5	Florida	3
6	Southern Cal	1
7	Texas	6
8	Missouri	2
9	Utah	–
10	Oklahoma State	3
11	TCU	1
12	Boise State	1
13	Ohio State	1
14	LSU	1
15	Ball State	1
16	Brigham Young	3
17	North Carolina	3
18	Georgia	11
19	Pittsburgh	5
20	California	6
	Georgia Tech	5
22	Michigan State	4
23	Northwestern	3
24	Minnesota	7
25	Maryland	–

Dropped Out: Oregon (#18), Florida State (#21), Tulsa (#22), South Florida (#23).

Explanations after the jump…

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Here’s my ballot for this week’s College Football BlogPoll which, as always, is hosted by MGOBlog.

Week 2

“Adjustments” in the Works

I have no business trying to rank all of the teams in the country, and this week’s ballot makes that obvious.  More on this week’s changes after the ballot.

My Ballot for the Week

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Georgia	–
2	Southern Cal	1
3	Ohio State	1
4	LSU	–
5	Missouri	1
6	Florida	1
7	Oklahoma	–
8	Auburn	–
9	Kansas	–
10	Wisconsin	1
11	Penn State	1
12	Texas	1
13	Alabama	1
14	Oregon	–
15	Wake Forest	–
16	Arizona State	1
17	Texas Tech	9
18	Utah	1
19	East Carolina	7
20	Colorado	2
21	Fresno State	1
22	Brigham Young	1
23	South Florida	–
24	California	2
25	Illinois	1

Dropped Out: West Virginia (#16), Clemson (#20), Bowling Green (#24), Tennessee (#25).

Comments,  Explanations, and Excuses

The high-points of the week’s changes after the jump:

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You hardly have to be a genius to realize that I am a college sports fan.

Whether I qualify as “die hard” is open to interpretation, I suppose. Still, as a VASF donor for more than a decade, season ticket holder for Tennessee Volunteers football, and as an individual who travels over six hours one-way to see each football game in Knoxville, I probably fall into the “dyed-in-the-wool” category placing me in the top tier of college fans when it comes to dedication (or lunacy depending on your perspective).

Either way, at various times in my life, I have contemplated becoming a more avid fan of professional sports. At times I have even been a “real” fan of certain teams by most standards. That being said, no matter what I do, I always seem to lose my interest in professional sports and return to my roots as a college football fan…

… or perhaps professional sports loses interest in me.

No, that last statement is not intended to be a wildly arrogant and self-centered declaration of my importance in the sports world. On the contrary, it is meant to show my complete insignificance — along with the millions of other sports fans out there.

In case you missed it, after forty-one years in the “City Which is Never Dry,” the Seattle Supersonics are pulling up stakes and heading to Oklahoma City to be known as the Oklahoma Clod-kickers, or something along those lines.

The era of the Supersonics is over…

Owing to the fact that I live on the Right-Coast and parted ways with the NBA in the mid-1990s, I was really not tuned into this story until after the final announcement was made. I make no claims to be a Supersonics fan, and can really only think of 2 Supersonics players ever: Shawn Kemp and Xavier McDaniel (mainly because he choked Wes Mathews in the middle of a game which is the sort of thing I tend not to forget). Still, I feel for the Supersonics’ fans, and I assume that there are a fair number of them, whether they be “die hard” or not. While I know that Seattle may potentially get another team some day, as a practical matter they now understand how SMU fans felt when their team got the death penalty for football. The only difference is that, unlike SMU who was finally able to resume play, Seattle’s program is gone for good — gonzo, outta here, dead, kaput, snuffed it …

If I am a Seattle Supersonics fan, that just plain sucks…

That got me to thinking (which is so rarely a good thing). The fact that the Supersonics could up and vanish like a fart in the wind, is the reason why I personally will never be anything more than an occasional fan of professional sports. At so many levels, that disturbs me. It also brings back a few memories.

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