Beat Visitor's 3rd BlogPoll of 2009 is up for your comments and/or accolades

Here's my third BlogPoll ballot of 2009. There are no changes in my rankings until you get to #7 and #9, where the top-ten spots that had been held by the "O" States (Oklahoma and Ohio respectively) have been vacated. Oklahoma State dropped the most precipitously, from #7 to #22 because of their 45-35 loss to previously unranked Houston. Ohio State dropped only 4 spots from #9 to #13 because of their close loss to #2 USC. Ohio State is now the highest-ranked 1-loss team on my ballot. Georgia, which narrowly beat the other USC yesterday is the lowest-ranked 1-loss team here because their loss in week one to Oklahoma State now looks even worse because of OK State's precipitous drop.

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

Dropped Out: North Carolina (#19), Iowa (#24), Notre Dame (#25).

You can see the sausage being made by clicking on the scribbles to the right that I made on my Week 2 ballot. The most important handwritten note, of course, is the line to the left of #4 Alabama. For those of you who can't read my chicken scratchings, it reads "RU needs to beat FIU by more than 25 pts next week!" If a Tom Savage-led Rutgers team can beat Florida International by a wider margin than that rolled up by the Crimson Tide yesterday, then maybe the Scarlet Knights will start getting more notice again -- beginning their comeback from the first week's collapse under another QB.
The dropping from the poll of #25 Notre Dame (and their replacement by Michigan) needs no explanation after the Wolverines' 38-34 victory over the Leprechauns, but North Carolina's 12-10 victory over the University of Connecticut Huskies on the strength of a safety (awarded because of a holding penalty in the endzone) did not show that the boys in baby blue deserved a place in my poll for now. New #21 Houston and #25 Michigan have moved into the top 25 for obvious reasons already mentioned. #23 Pittsburgh's entry is more of a gut feeling move for me (and if I can be accused of homerism for favoring a second Big East team, then every SEC voter can be accused of the same thing).
As always, please feel free to savage or praise this week's entry in the Comments section (no registration required).