Dear BlogPoll Applicants

SO YOU WANT to join the BlogPoll. Good choice, as the BlogPoll is the most prestigious blogpoll there is.

These are the requirements for entrance:

Be a sports blog with a focus on college football.

90% of your posts should be about sports and you should have college football content every week. It's okay if you're, say, a regional sports blog with a focus on a few teams as long as one of the teams you cover regularly is a college football team. Deadspin or The Big Lead... not so much. Those blogs acknowledge college football's existence, they don't focus on it.

Post regularly for at least six months.

No exceptions. What's regular? Three or four posts a week of actual content. What's actual content? Something other than brief links to items.

Have some technorati authority or a readership.

If no one is reading your blog or linking to it by the end of six months, chances are you're not one of the top 50-100 college football blogs, and the poll will not grow beyond those numbers, ever. If you've got ten or so comments on every post or some incoming links or you can point to some Sitemeter numbers that indicate you get triple-digit hits, that will suffice.

(Note: this requirement is much laxer for non-BCS blogs, since the potential audience for a Fresno State blog or a Navy blog is smaller.)

Don't be crowded out.

Do you cover Georgia or Michigan? Uh... you're going to have a tough time getting in because those schools have a huge, thriving constellation of blogs and the poll has a strict cap on the number of blogs representing a particular school. You'll have to hope one of the current members goes "blip."

If your blog meets all those requirements it will be considered for entry. A lot of factors go into each individual decision, as by this point the poll just can't accept every qualified blog. We're trying to find dedicated voters with excellent blogs who are geographically distributed across the country. Sometimes it's a tricky balance, and sometimes we have to turn down a blog for reasons other than its quality. Apologies in advance if this turns out to be you.

If you do get turned down, please don't get turned off. If you come back the next year with another year's worth of posts under your belt, we will re-consider your application. There's a lot of turnover in the blogosphere.

To apply, email me; please include the words "blogpoll application" in your subject.Â