About those two voters

I live in a shell.
I only discovered last week that there were two voters in the AP poll who were continually casting their number one votes for WVU. (For the uninitiated, the Mountaineers are my team.) They opened the season voting for WV, and have stuck to their guns.

After a few moments of scanning the web, I’ve discovered who the two voters are.
It’s really cool that it’s so easy to see the voters’ ballots. Just head here to find out who the AP’s 65 voters are and click the links next to their entries for their ballots.

I fully expected to find that the guy from the Charleston (WV) Gazette was one of those crazies.
Nope.
One is a reporter on all things USC for the LA Daily News (Scott Wolf). The other is a reporter on all things UCLA (Kevin Pearson).

Wolf doesn’t present his rationale for his selections anywhere that I could find (but I didn’t look very hard). Pearson mentioned two weeks ago that he simply likes better what he’s seen on the field from WVU than OSU. It’s not a compelling argument, but it’s something.

I can’t help but think it’s an anti-Big Ten bias, though. One can imagine that because the Rose Bowl traditionally pits the Big Ten v. the Pac Ten that there’s either uncelebrated honor for or hatred of the Big Ten out on the left coast.

It’s interesting to note that Dan Shanoff (of espn.com page two fame (?) ) did this week with his Top 25 what I’ve done with mine. And that’s drop Michigan down a spot to number three.

And his rationale is right in line with mine, as well. Does that mean I should be a sidebar on a withering side page on the biggest sports site (I’ve done no research on this; it could very well be fourth on the list) on the web?
Probably not. But, at least it validates my thinking.
I don’t know if WVU could beat Ohio State. I don’t even know if WVU can go to Louisville and win. (I believe that they can, but they’ll have to play their best game of the year to date, by a lot.) But, I’ve grown weary of the one-note sound coming from the Michigan band. With Manningham out, Michigan’s offense isn’t just unimpressive, it’s nearly nonexistent. I like a grind-it-out, three yards and a cloud of dust offense as much as anyone, but come on. I mean it. Come on. Seems to me like Michigan’s conservative play calling could cost them when they least expect it.
Oh, and OSU wil blow their farging doors off.

So, what are those two guys on the left coast doing? I have no idea. But, it’s interesting to say the least. AP voters have their own biases. More than likely, these two guys are simply playing out a bet or something similarly stupid.

I like the idea of the Mountaineers getting votes for #1 in a poll. I just wish I had faith their votes were made in good faith.
If WVU wins at UofL on Thursday, though, I’ll have a hard time not giving them at least half the #1 vote.
It’s one thing to go to a place and beat a freshman QB starting his first game against real competition in that team’s first real game. Quite another to head into a conference opponent’s place to ostensibly determine the conference champion. The charge that WVU will be facing its first real competition on Thursday gets no argument from me, but the stakes are much bigger, and Brian Brohm is no week two Colt McCoy. More pointedly, Bobby “Kill Temple” Petrino is no Mack Brown.

Other notes:
YAY Temple!! I’m glad the Owls got off the schnide, but can Temple please just shut down their football program now. Please? Or drop to DII, where it belongs.

I’m not surprised the Trojans lost. I’m surprised they lost to the Beavers, though.

Saturday night, around 9.30p, the apocalypse looked ready to occur. Tennesse was trailing South Carolina 17-14 on ESPN. Texas was trailing Texas Tech 21-10 on TBS. And Florida State was trailing Maryland 17-7 on ESPN2. Only one of those upsets held, though. Not surprisingly, the one game that probably wasn’t an upset so much as a nail in the FSU coffin was the only result that held.

I completely forgot about the UConn-Rutgers game last night. Haven’t really had an opportunity to check out the Scarlet Knights yet, and I missed an opportunity to scout them against a common opponent. Oh, well. (Meanwhile, I think Drew Bledsoe’s career as an NFL starter is finally over. He’d been holding on for the last five years, but we’ve seen the end of his time at Dallas, methinks. He’ll probably retire at season’s end, and it was musings like these that distracted me from the Sunday Night College Football Game.)

Final note (non-sports): While I haven’t blogged here in a while, I wanted to warn it’ll likely be another long while before I’m back (unless I’m moved to blog after the WVU-UofL game). I’ll be partaking of another writing adventure doing National Novel Writing Month, for which I’m incredibly unprepared this year. No ideas for a novel AT ALL this year. At least last year I had an inkling of what I was doing at this point. Not so this year, and I’m a little scared. Ah, well.