Hello. If you have a blog that…

1. has been active consistently since September,
2. is either about a college football team, college football in general, or is a regional blog covering local teams including the local U, and
3. gets some minimum level of traffic and interaction (maybe a hundred hits a day and comments that do not consistently read "zero")

…you are invited to apply for BlogPoll membership as long as you are willing to divulge what your favorite team is. What is the BlogPoll? It is a college football poll run by bloggers that is entering its fifth year of existence. Last year it turned into an excitingly useful thing that paid considerably more attention to Alabama's rise to power than the usual suspects and was rewarded by the events at the end of the season.

Poll membership requires you to do the following things:

1. Pay attention to the explicitly stated poll philosophy.
2. Enter a draft ballot by Monday at 11 AM and post this on your site.
3. Request feedback from readers.
4. Enter a final ballot by Wednesday at 10 AM with any modifications.

That's it. How much detail you'd like to go into is up to you; voters have ranged from the laconic to the very serious indeed. If you miss a lot of votes you probably won't be invited back but the occasional whiff is no big deal.

Email me to be put on the applicants list. If you're already in the poll or have already submitted an application there's no need to As the poll matures I am trying to achieve geographic and team balance, so if you want a quick ballpark on your chances check the voter list and figure out how many blogs already cover your team and conference. As far as teams go, zero or one is good, two is iffy, and three is not possible unless someone drops out (which does happen all the time). Conferences… let's just say there aren't a lot of Pac-10 blogs that will get turned down.

Decisions will come at the end of next week.