Pick Six Week 5

These recaps keep coming out later and later.  Pretty soon they’ll be published after the games to watch have already been watched.  Standings are where they always are.

It felt like half of the AP Top 25 lost last week.  After counting, it turns out it was only 7 teams but they were all quite humiliating losses.  Last week I said that South Florida and Baylor had reached the peak of their rankings and would slide back down the rankings over the next few weeks.  Well, I was half right. USF and Baylor did reach the peak of their rankings but it was more of a crash and burn than a slow slide.  USF (and TCU) dropped out of the rankings, while Baylor dropped from 15th to 25th.

Even with all this chaos, Michigan State still didn’t climb back into the polls.  For the second straight week they are the highest “others receiving votes” team.  Auburn and Kansas State leapfrogged MSU (and many others) into the 15th and 20th place of the poll.

In the other Group D matchup Georgia convincingly beat Mississippi State to effectively end the southern MSU’s hopes of being ranked this season.  Georgia only picked up 3 votes (8 last week to 11 this week) but if they win at Tennessee and at Vanderbilt they might be right near the top of the unranked teams in time for the World’s Largest Outdoor Non-Alcoholic Cocktail Party (WLONACP).  Florida is playing at Auburn and at LSU before the WLONACP which will certainly give them another loss and more than likely two more.  So this year’s WLONACP will probably be a season-saving win for one of the teams and a season-crusher for the other.  Hopefully you didn’t pick both Georgia and Florida in your ballot.

The preseason-unranked teams are making a strong showing this week.  A season high eight teams are ranked even though we lost USF.

Individual Ballot Analysis

For the first time this year the leaders have kept their place on top. I can’t say that the leaderboard stays the same because BlueMars24 and Cottonpicker are joined by Willhouse in first place with a ballot score of 92 points.  Willhouse gives up a point by picking Oklahoma instead of Alabama but gains that point back since West Virginia is one spot above Florida in Group E.  They’re all 4 points behind the perfect ballot of LSU, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, anybody, Auburn and Clemson which is worth 96 points.

The doldrums of the contest gains a third contestant whose fate fell in the running of the Skip Holtz Bulls.  All three people have 20 points earned by Oregon (17 pts) and Florida State (3 pts).  Four out of their six picks are all unranked.  If it is any consolation to them they could have done worse if they picked Texas A&M instead of Florida State.  This week’s worst possible score is a mere 19 points.

Weekly Brian Watch

Right now Brian is rising and falling with the fortunes of West Virginia.  The Mountaineers made a big leap into 16th place and Brian makes a big leap back up to 52nd place.

Judging Your Picks

After this week’s chaos a completely random ballot has dropped down to an expected value of 51 points.  The MGoBlog median and mean is still 60 points.  So if you’re above one of those scores you have at least some shred of dignity.

For those of you below 51 points here is a picture of some of the kittens a stray cat gave birth to on my porch.

Being in the bottom half isn’t so bad big guy. I literally live in a box.

Games to Watch

Oregon is currently wiping the floor (field?) with Cal in a game that is symbolic of the majority of games this week.  Most of the ranked teams are playing a conference game against a not very good opponent.  There are a few good matchups though

• Red River Shootout: #3 Oklahoma vs #11 Texas
• #17 Florida at #1 LSU
• #15 Auburn at #10 Arkansas

While not elite games, there are also a few low ranked teams that have a decent chance of getting upset by an unranked team.

• Missouri at #20 Kansas State
• #22 Arizona State at Utah
• #24 Texas A&M at Texas Tech
• Iowa State at #25 Baylor