( This is a guest series by MotSaG reader Jason Nafziger. He’ll be taking a weekly look at the college football polls and pointing out the absurd, the laughable and the head scratchers. Please note that Jason is not talking about the BlogPoll. Or my ballot to the BlogPoll.)

Now the fun begins, as we start breaking down the maddeningly nonsensical week-to-week adjustments in the polls that will eventually decide the two teams allowed to play for the National Championship.

1. Alabama
2. Ohio State

Again, no movement here, and as long as these two teams continue to win, the pollsters will have an easy job this year. Both were impressive in their wins against top teams this week, and more importantly, they were more impressive than the teams right behind them in the poll. Trust me, if the Tide and the Buckeyes stay perfect, no one outside of the Linen District will care if the Broncos did too.

3. Boise State

Ah, those Broncos with their “big” win over the Hokies of Virginia Tech. You remember the Hokies, right? That’d be the team that managed a single early TD in a loss to James Madison this weekend. I think James Madison is a college, but if you tell me that Virginia Tech lost to the re-animated corpse of America’s fourth president, I won’t argue with you.

Somehow, though, the immediate and major devaluation of their only win did not hurt Boise’s ranking. It’s still a little early to call this an agenda, but Oliver Stone is watching you, pollsters.

4. Texas
5. TCU

The remainder of the top 5 holds steady as well, as both Lone Star teams cruised to fairly easy victories this week.

6. Oregon
7. Florida

Ranked team faces relatively weak BCS-level opponent. Struggles a little early, finds themselves in a low-scoring tie at halftime. Regroups and explodes for 30+ points in the second half, making the scoreboard look a little better than it should. Somehow, that equals a 2-spot boost for the Ducks, but a 1-spot drop for the Gators.

There are two possible explanations for this, and neither is logical. The first is that the voters wanted to put Oregon higher in the pre-season, but were scared off by the exit of Jeremiah “For My Next Trick, I’ll Kidnap John Hodgman And Justin Long” Masoli. Now that the Ducks are performing well, they’re ranking them where they wanted to in the first place. The second is that scoring 120 points in 120 minutes of football is just too appealing to the bottom-line watchers that fill out the ballots.

8. Nebraska
9. Oklahoma
10. Iowa

In contrast to the Ducks, all three of these teams thoroughly dominated their opponents, with each game easily over by halftime. And yet, only Oklahoma (who dismantled then-#17 Florida State) moved up, and that was only one spot. To recap: Oregon got a 2-spot bump for struggling to put away Tennessee while the Sooners got a 1-spot reward for blasting the Seminoles like a San Bruno gas line.

Apparently to accommodate the Ducks, Nebraska and Iowa actually lost a spot for their convincing wins (and Iowa’s was even over a Big 12 team who happens to be their in-state rival). And the season has just begun.

Of Note: Denard Robinson ranked 22nd this week, rest of team to transfer.

( This is a guest post by MotSaG reader Jason Nafziger. He’ll be taking a weekly look at the college football polls and pointing out the absurd, the laughable and the head scratchers. Please note that Jason is not talking about the BlogPoll. Or my ballot to the BlogPoll.)

Welcome to the first edition of Poll Dancing, a weekly look at the single most important factor in college football: someone else’s opinion of you. As much as we might hate the obscene amount of emphasis the BCS format puts on the polls (and we do hate it ever so much), we’re stuck with it, so we might as well poke it with a stick.

Here, we’ll be focusing on the two polls that actually impact the BCS ratings, the USA Today Coaches’ Poll and the Harris Interactive Poll. Since the Harris folks can’t be bothered to turn in a list of 25 teams they’ve heard of until mid-to-late September, we’ll have to make do with the one group of people in the country who are able to watch the least amount of games during football season: the coaches. (Did we mention this system sucks?)

1. Alabama
2. Ohio State

Not surprisingly, the top two teams from the pre-season poll remain unchanged, as both handily dispatched their overmatched opponents. Next week could be interesting, though: both will face a top 15 team.

3. Boise State
4. Texas
5. TCU

Now we get a little shuffling, as Boise State and TCU jumped two spots each by downing BCS conference foes, and are poised to run the table and face each other in another anticlimactic Fiesta Bowl.

6. Florida

Despite topping Miami (OH) by 22, the Gators bounced 3 spots down the poll like an errant shotgun snap. Florida’s embarrassing inability to grasp one basic fundamental concept of the game was bailed out only by the Redhawks’ embarrassing inability to grasp every basic fundamental concept of the game.

7. Nebraska
8. Oregon
9. Iowa
10.Oklahoma

The mid-majors had a hand in this group’s reordering as well. Even though Utah State couldn’t close the deal, Oklahoma paid the price of being taken to the wire by a team that’s won 13 games in the past five years. Oregon got a little extra boost from their 72-0 euthanasia of New Mexico. You know you’ve gone too far when they make you enter your initials at the end of the game.

Next Week: Lots of big games, plus Florida tries to master Connect Four.

Because you need help planning the next 13+ Saturdays in advance, here is your 2010 NCAA Helmet Schedule.

This year it was a little hard to come by a schedule that didn’t have a million embedded links, so big thanks to MGHelmets.com. They actually have an interactive, hyperlinked schedule if that’s your fancy, which you can find here. My schedule linked above has the intralinks removed because I don’t like them.

Maybe you do.

It may seem hard to believe, but they play football outside of the Midwest on occasion. Sure, most of the time it’s like RC Cola – not as good as the real thing while still remaining a workable thirst-quencher when the good stuff isn’t available – but it’s there nonetheless. Anyway, I thought I’d occasionally take the opportunity to discuss the goings-on outside the Mother Conference.

Over at SI.com, Stewart Mandel asks the question and continues:

While BYU will never be coveted by BCS bowls to the same degree as the Irish, it might be able to accomplish many of the same goals (more TV money, better exposure) by freeing itself from the shackles of an eight-game conference schedule and The Mtn.

The key word in that sentence, of course, is “might.”

I’m only speaking from the point of view as a Buckeye ex-pat now living on the eastern edge of MWC territory, but I think it might be a little more realistic to replace “might” with “probably won’t” in that sentence.

The only reason Notre Dame has so much TV exposure is because they have a huge fan base nationwide. Why this is, here in 2010, is beyond me but we’ll stipulate that’s the case. They’re like the Cowboys of NCAA football, only if the Cowboys had been vacillating between 8-8 and 5-11 for the past twenty years.

BYU has a lot of fans outside of Utah as well, but the same could be said for any major college football program. From a strictly demographic standpoint,there are only about 5.6 million Mormons in the United States, compared to 66 million Catholics. Numbers were changed from the original post – see the update at the bottom. – Ed. Not every Mormon is a fan of BYU – I know several who absolutely hate them because they’re Utes fans – and not every BYU fan is a Mormon. But I’ll go out on a limb and say most BYU fans are Mormons. At the very least, I’d bet that Notre Dame has a much higher percentage of their fan base who are non-Catholic than BYU does with non-Mormons. So it’s a lot more apples and oranges than it would appear on its face. It would be like asking “Can the Cincinnati Reds be the next Yankees?” because their games have a very healthy share of the TV ratings in Cincinnati.

For that reason alone, I think there’s no way BYU gets anything resembling Notre Dame’s deal with NBC. As Mandel states, it’s possible that they’ll get a bit more money going on their own than they’d get from the MWC, but would the additional revenue be worth the scheduling nightmares that would surely ensue were the Cougars to go independent in football?

Note – I’ll leave it to you to laugh among yourselves about a Mormon university sharing a mascot name with types like Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City.

On the other hand, if BYU stays in the MWC, they’d be in an up-and-coming conference that still includes Boise State, TCU, Air Force, Wyoming, and has just added Fresno State and Nevada to the mix. The way thing have gone the last few years, there’s a significant chance that – even after losing Utah to the Pac-12 – the Mountain West will be on the upswing and potentially even garner an automatic bid to the BCS when they re-evaluate conferences. Would BYU be willing to throw that away for a little more money? That remains to be seen, I guess.

update – I edited the post to reflect the Census Bureau’s numbers for total voluntary self-reported religious affiliation in the United States (66,404,000 Catholics to 5,691,000 Mormons.) Originally I used the number of adults identifying with a certain religion as reported by the American Religious Identification Survey (46 million Catholics to 2.5 million Mormons.) Please note that these data are (and were) able to be found by clicking on the little red bit of text that reads “a strictly demographic standpoint“. Nevertheless it did change the ratio of Catholics to Mormons from 18.6 to 11.4 – so while it didn’t exactly change the point that I was making, prudence demanded that I made sure no one left this site thinking I didn’t do my homework.

I don’t know why I won’t just let this go, but here is the latest development in the Seantrel Henderson saga:

This may not result in a single thing, but I find myself fascinated by it all.

If you were a student and you were an athlete, would you meet with an agent?

Should be simple enough.

You’d think these young men would be instructed in how to deal with these guys.

This sort of puts those five hundred dollars Smith used to pay for HWSNBN’s cell phone, no?

This is June, right? Can this many exciting things really be happening in the world of College Football (capitalized for respect, son)?

We have something cooking for the Big Ten expansion (hopefully!) forthcoming, but in the meantime, per Bruce Feldman at ESPN, the NCAA is about to get medieval on USC:

Wonder how that two year post season ban is going to sit with Seantrel Henderson.