This idea started after the Week 4 poll came out September 16th.  I found a website called pollspeak.com and have been completely enamored with it ever since.  I love being able to see every single person’s poll in one place and to see how ridiculous everyone is.  Doug Lesmerises and Jon Wilner were the two that set this whole thing in motion, and it sort of escalated from there.

Here is the last one for the year, along with the final tally of “Medals” for each writer.

Bronze Medal: Doug Doughty, Roanoke Times.

Doughty is a new comer here, and he made a solid splash.  Georgia is far better than #8, while he overrates Notre Dame at #4.  Cincinnati, UCF and Northern Illinois are far worse than what they’re ranked.  Northern Illinois is an absolutely fraudulent team, and the only reason they didn’t lose by more in the Orange Bowl is because Florida State stopped throwing the ball.  Cincinnati’s best game was an overtime loss to Louisville, and Central Florida was a terrible 4-loss team.  They’re so bad that they are in the “others receiving votes” category in the AP Poll, despite being ranked 17th here.

How can you rank these teams and leave LSU and Michigan unranked?  Michigan and LSU would absolutely demolish all of those terrible teams.

Silver Medal: Harold Gutmann, Herald-Sun of Durham NC.

God this is really bad.  Notre Dame at #2 is self-explanatory.  How can you have Florida ranked #6 after losing to Louisville, and Georgia all the way at #10 when they beat Florida?  Kansas State at #8 is high, and just further wrecks Harold’s Top Ten.  I mean, did he even watch any of the bowl games?  Northern Illinois at #20, Utah State at #21 and San Jose State at #22 just round out the problems with this guy’s poll.  Definitely time for him to head back to the drawing board.

Gold Medal: Ray Ratto, Comcast Sports Bay Area.

It appears Ray will never learn.  He loves those non-AQ schools.  In fact, he loves to overrate any school that’s too small to receiver consideration.

Notre Dame at #3 is far too high after they were destroyed and exposed by Alabama.  It’s not surprising though that so many people still think they deserve to be ranked this high. The Notre Dame bias is alive and well and we’re going to have to deal with it for the forseeable future.  Kansas State at #9 is also a bit high, after they were rocked by Oregon in what thought should be essentially a semi-final game.

Utah State #17, San Jose State #18, Northern Illinois #22, Arkansas State #23, and North Dakota State #25 (FCS).  All of these teams are overrated, and Nebraska, Wisconsin and Michigan would beat all of these teams.  Same goes for Vanderbilt, it’s a shame that they didn’t get ranked when they actually deserved to be.

I sat through the Arkansas State-Kent State GoDaddy.com Bowl and I can tell you that both of them were completely awful.  It was a pathetic game to watch, and neither team deserves to be ranked.  Kent State obviously didn’t end up ranked, but they very nearly made the Orange Bowl.  What a disaster that would have been.

North Dakota State, they’ve done a great job.  They moved up from Division II two years ago, and won two straight FCS titles.  Could they beat some of the FBS teams?  Yes they actually did this year.  They beat a four-win Colorado State team. But that doesn’t mean they deserve to be ranked when they played almost all FCS teams.  Any team can show up and win one game one time.  How do you justify ranking an FCS team with one FBS victory over a horrific team?  Just because they won the FCS championship game?  That holds no bearing on the FBS Rankings.

My Final Poll:

Notre Dame was exposed.  I was all for letting them have their shot against Alabama in the National Championship though.  They went undefeated, they got a lot of lucky breaks that the fan base and media chose to ignore, but I was totally cool with letting them play the Crimson Tide machine.  I couldn’t have been more pleased with the result.

Standings (If they only have one medal it’s ranked in order of appearance, first to most recent):

Scott Wolf, Los Angeles News: 1 B

Cecil Hurt, Tuscaloosa News: 1B

Doug Doughty, Roanoke Times: 1B

Doug Lesmerises, Cleveland Plain Dealer: 1S

Glenn Guilbeau, Gannett Louisiana News Service: 1S

Jeremy Sampson, Lansing, MI: 1S

Chris Murray, Reno Gazette-Journal: 1G

Harold Gutmann, Harold-Sun of Durham, NC: 1B, 1S

Pete DiPrimio, FortWayne News-Sentinel: 1B, 1S, 2G

Josh Kendall, The State, Columbia SC: 3B, 2S, 1G

Jon Wilner, San Jose Mercury News: 1B, 4G(4 straight)

Ray Ratto, Comcast Sports Bay Online: 2B, 4S, 3G

I thought about giving Jon Wilner the nod here since he came out to such a strong start with 4 Gold’s, but Ray Ratto’s strong push at the end of the year was able to catch up and pass Wilner.  The 9 medal’s are nothing short of impressive and it will be interesting to see who can surpass their total next year.