Ere I get to my BlogPoll ballot revisions this Armistice Day---while we honor all veterans here, my grandfather fought in World War I, so, out of respect for his memory, I will continue to refer to it by its original name---I feel the need to comment on Dr. Saturday’s recent observation regarding the shooting deaths in Alabama.

Evidently, Shannon Odom, the half-brother of one of the victims (and, I guess, the half-brother-in-law of the other), thought it important to respond to accounts that his relatives had been L.S.U. boosters by setting the record straight: "My brother was an adamant Alabama fan." This led Dr. Saturday to note dryly:

You can report on the details of two terrible, untimely, tragically pointless deaths if you must. But the family will be damned if they're going to let you malign them as LSU fans.

Now, I get where the good Doc is coming from on this one, and, sure, it may seem to some that Shannon Odom picked a silly point to emphasize in the midst of his grief, but I can’t exactly fault him for saying what he said about his half-brother. If I am ever shot to death following a football game (which, let’s face it, isn’t as far outside the realm of probability as I would like to think, and which most likely wouldn’t even be the worst futures bet you’ve ever made) and initial news reports refer to me as a Clemson, Florida, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Tennessee, or (especially) Auburn fan, every last one of you had better e-mail, call, and text-message the news outlet in question to state unequivocally that I was Bulldog born and Bulldog bred and, when I got shot, I was Bulldog dead. If any of you don’t, I promise you I will find out where you live and my spirit will haunt you. Also, if I’m accused of being an Auburn fan, you’d better tell the press, "He hated Auburn."

As far as my preliminary BlogPoll ballot was concerned, I received a number of good constructive criticisms, for which I am most grateful. For one thing, drothgery pointed out the inconsistency of ranking Missouri ahead of Oklahoma State, since they have the same record, they play in the same conference, and the Cowboys went on the road and beat the Tigers head to head. I just flat dropped the ball on that one, so I thank wino1618 for making a persuasive case regarding where to rank Missouri relative to Georgia, Ohio State, and Oklahoma State.

With respect to the higher-rated teams on my ballot, both kerouacinjapan and Texan_Dawg offered reasoned arguments for placing Texas ahead of Florida and FSUncensored advocated dropping all of the mid-majors. While I understand the latter argument, I don’t know with whom to replace them, so they stayed put (except for B.Y.U., on whom I bailed anew), but the Longhorns were bumped up based upon the points offered on their behalf.

Finally, hound dog wanted to know how the Bayou Bengals fell out of the top 25 after taking Alabama to overtime. Although I had an answer for that, I decided I didn’t buy my own justification, so L.S.U. stayed in the poll, just ahead of the Gamecocks.

Consequently, my revised BlogPoll ballot looks like this:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	--
2	Texas Tech	--
3	Texas	2
4	Florida	--
5	Oklahoma	1
6	Southern Cal	1
7	Utah	2
8	Penn State	5
9	Boise State	1
10	Ohio State	3
11	Oklahoma State	3
12	Georgia	2
13	Missouri	1
14	North Carolina	1
15	Ball State	3
16	Michigan State	3
17	Cincinnati	7
18	Pittsburgh	5
19	TCU	8
20	Florida State	6
21	Virginia Tech	5
22	Oregon State	3
23	LSU	6
24	South Carolina	2
25	Georgia Tech	5

Dropped Out: California (#16), Maryland (#21), West Virginia (#22).

Once again, my thanks go out to all of the commenters who left thoughtful and critical feedback which helped to clarify my thinking and improve the quality of my ballot. Nice job, everyone.

Go ‘Dawgs! Auburna delenda est!