Introducing The BlogPoll

The AP has withdrawn from the BCS. ESPN has dropped its name from the coaches poll. College football casts about for an authoritative, 100% correct ranking system.

Enter The BlogPoll.

That's right, a poll! Compiled by bloggers! Feel a strange tingly sensation in the parts of your body your grandmother told you didn't really exist? I thought so!

Voting Rules
To apply and be accepted to the blogpoll, you must have a regularly-updated blog that focuses on college football. This site can either be shamelessly partisan (like mgoblog) or studiously neutral (like College Football Resource). Multisport blogs dedicated to the sporting exploits of one school are welcome, as are blogs that split time between sports and other things. Blogs dedicated to lower divisions are okay, too, as long as you watch your share of the big boys.

Blogs should be updated regularly with actual content. If half your posts are "sorry for not posting for the last two weeks, here's a link to this newspaper article," that doesn't count.

One blog, one vote. Sorry, Blue-Gray Sky.

Bloggers from neutral sources must disclose alma mater (or, lacking a DI-A alma mater, a favorite team) so their ballots can be attacked just like anyone else's.

Friday night a post will show up on mgoblog declaring itself to be that week's ballot box. Participating voters should post a comment on the post with a link to their ballot. Ballots must be posted by the end of Monday for the poll's official posting on Tuesday.

The preseason BlogPoll will be posted August 23rd.

Polling Philosophy
The BlogPoll strives to function rationally and thoughtfully, removing inequities in the current poll system that drive fans nuts.

The poll is a power poll, meaning that future schedules should not be a factor in the ranking process--no henious overrating of WVU last year or Purdue this year, please. The main consideration should be "team A would beat team B on a neutral field." (This ideal is impossible to maintain across multiple teams, as matchups obviously play a major role, but something close as possible is desired.)

Voters are encouraged to look dimly upon schools that schedule exclusively cupcakes for non-conference games and reward schools that take on challenges and aquit themselves well, even in defeat.

Blogs will all disclose their ballots and be rated on Shameless Bias via a formula that calculates how overrated alma mater and local conference schools are relative to the blogpoll at large in the hopes of shaming flagrant homers into reasonability.

Voters are also encouraged to snipe at each other's ballots, because there's no such thing as bad publicity.

To be included, please email mgoblog.

Participating Blogs
mgoblog (shameless homer for... Michigan)
Every Day Should Be Saturday (Florida)
The Blue-Gray Sky (Notre Dame)
TrojanWire (USC)
Straight Bangin' (Michigan)

UT Vols Blog (Tennessee)
ParadigmBlog (Michigan)
WV Law Dog Blog (West Virginia)
Pitt Sports Blather (Pitt)
Knight Hawk (Rutgers)

My Opinion On Sports (Oklahoma)
Frank McGrath (Tulane)
Catholic Packer Fan (Notre Dame)
Boi From Troy (USC)
50-Yard Lion (Penn State)

Eagle In Atlanta (Boston College)
Texas A&M And Baseball In No Particular Order (Texas A&M)
Sporting Fools (Florida State)
Cheap Seats (Texas Tech)
We Are The Boys (Florida)

Heismanpundit (USC)
Mississippi State Sports Blog (Mississippi State)
Sexy Results (Virginia)
Section Six (NC State)
Heelsblog (North Carolina)

fanopticon.com (Alabama)
StateFansNation (NC State)
Have You Met Tony? (Bowling Green)
Rob in Madtown (Michigan)
Ay Ziggy Zoomba (Bowling Green)

StrugglingJoe (Nebraska)
iBlog For Cookies (Michigan)
The djl Zone (Bowling Green (again!) )
The Bruce Ciskie Show (Wisconsin)
Orange Juice (Syracuse)