Football: Athlon rank, BCS... again

Michigan checks in at #7 on Athlon's rundown of the top 25. OSU is #12, Purdue is #15, and Iowa is yet to come. I probably shouldn't bother linking this, since the article is brief and is no doubt free of any information you don't already have, but it's the offseason, and I don't have much else to do. I've noticed this pattern many places, including the official sites of Iowa and Minnesota. The University of Iowa actually decided that some ex-Florida State walk-on's vaguely English rankings were worth writing up and reporting! Minnesota has CFN's top 20 Heisman candidates (which feature Lawrence Maroney at #3) up.

mgoblog is planning a similar attention-getting mechanism that will be revealed soon.

The BCS has decided to open yet another can of worms by publically revealing the contents of the ballots that compose the coaches' poll. Expect a flood of articles this fall picking out the anomalies and intoning darkly about conflict of interest. I may even do one.

Coaches aren't going to happy about that, to be sure, but more alarming to college football fans has to be the fact that the second poll in the system is as of yet completely undefined. Not like it matters, though, because it's only a third of the votes that decide who's going to the national championship game. Just figure it out sometime in November and we'll call it good. This is insane. The BCS poll currently consists of

1. One poll voted on by people with a direct interest in its outcome.
2. One completely undefined poll.
3. Useless computer rankings. (There just aren't nearly enough data points. I could go on, but I would bore you.)

I miss the old days with the crazy-ass, incredibly complicated BCS grid of magic. At least then you could pretend that when you threw all the ingredients in and stirred haphazardly you'd come out with quiche. Now... not so much.

Yo quiero playoff. Y Taco Bell.