BlogPoll ballot #10: Let the bodies hit the floor.

It’s a Monday Night Massacre on the BlogPoll ballot, where six teams get broomed from the top 25 for losses of varying degrees of suckitude. This was a particularly challenging ballot to screw together -- on my first draft I had California up several slots for losing to Arizona State, Alabama up ten slots for doing nothing at all, and numerous other minor clusterfucks. It’s probably still not structurally sound, but of course nothing is set in stone until Wednesday at noon, so I have every confidence that you readers will apprise of me of each and every instance in which I’m a Pollyanna, naysayer, homer, hater, or random tollbag between now and then.

Games watched: Boston College-Virginia Tech, some of West Virginia-Rutgers and Mississippi State-Kentucky, Georgia-Florida, the end of N.C. State-Virginia.

1. LSU (last week: 1)

2. Ohio State (2)
Yup, the Buckeyes, despite a fairly dominating performance over Penn State, stay just below LSU. Why? Because that was their first win of import this entire season, and it was over a team that still managed to get handled by Illinois and Michigan. LSU, meanwhile, has wins over teams currently ranked 11, 18, 19, and 23 in the AP poll, and they needed three overtimes to finally give up the ghost in their one loss. On a neutral field, I think LSU wins. But who knows? There are a lot of big games left to be played by both teams.

3. West Virginia (7)

4. Oregon (6)
Sign of the Apocalypse #4,662 in a season that was hardly looking for more of them: Southern Cal has been all but knocked out of the Pac-10 title race and it ain’t even November yet.

5. Oklahoma (3)

6. Arizona State (9)

7. Boston College (5)
Am I an asshole for dropping the Eagles two slots after one of the most rapid, ruthless come-from-behind wins of the entire season? I don’t think so, considering that a) they can’t just pile the game on Matt Ryan’s back every single week and b) Virginia Tech and their prevent defense did their level best to give the game away. Still think they’ll win the ACC, though.

8. Kansas (12)

9. Missouri (8)

10. Auburn (13)
Seems too high for a team whose offense hasn’t exactly been rolling consistently over the last few weeks, yet Tommy Tuberville has made a habit of winning big games against long odds.

11. Georgia (NR/29)
Another team that seems too high -- regardless of the win over Florida, an 18-slot jump might be a bit of an overreaction. But let’s just say this -- if Georgia plays with the same fire and confidence the rest of the season that they had against Florida (and yeah, that’s a big if), they could very well run the table and win the SEC East in spite of two very embarrassing early-season losses. What this means, of course, is that they’ll be tied with Troy going into the fourth quarter this Saturday. As a Dawg fan, I am prepared.

12. Florida (4)

13. Wake Forest (17)

14. Michigan (18)

15. Texas (19)

16. Boise State (NR)

17. Alabama (23)
The Crimson Tide benefits handsomely from a whole slew of high-ranked teams getting thumped this weekend. They’ll either earn it with an upset win over LSU or lose and get knocked right back down again.

18. South Florida (11)

19. Southern California (15)

20. Wisconsin (25)

21. Virginia Tech (20)
Yup, only a one-spot drop despite a weird late-game collapse against BC -- but let the record show that their defense straight-up dominated the top offense in the conference for 56 minutes, and I’ve got them way lower than either of the mainstream polls do (the AP has them #11, the coaches have them #13).

22. Hawaii (NR)

23. Tennessee (NR/26)
I’m not terribly confident about this one, as the Vols still have three juicy opportunities to knock themselves back out of the SEC East race.

24. Clemson (NR)

25. Connecticut (NR)

The next five: South Carolina (16), California (22), Illinois, Penn State (24), Mississippi State.

Dropped out: Kentucky (10), Rutgers (14), South Carolina (16), UCLA (21), California (22), Penn State (24).