Earlier today, the new BlogPoll was released and the blogosphere agrees with the coaches and the sportswriters professional sportswriters reporters: Southern California took over the top spot and Georgia dropped to No. 2.

The difference is the margin: U.S.C. took 40 of 75 first-place votes, with the ‘Dawgs drawing only ten. The remainder went to No. 3 Florida (9), No. 4 Ohio State (9), No. 5 Oklahoma (5), and No. 12 Alabama (2).

With Missouri and Texas checking in at Nos. 6 and 8, respectively, and the seventh and ninth spots going, in turn, to L.S.U. and Auburn, it’s pretty clear that it will all come out in the wash between the Trojans’ looming date with the Buckeyes and the regular-season round-robins and subsequent championship games in the Big 12 and the S.E.C. Fairly or unfairly, A.C.C. and Big East teams, and Big Ten and Pac-10 teams not named Ohio State or Southern California, need not apply.

A word to the playoff advocates among you: the BlogPoll’s No. 1 and No. 4 teams will play one another and the BlogPoll’s No. 2 and No. 3 teams will play one another, with the latter pair meeting at a neutral site. Maybe there is something to that whole "the regular season is a playoff" mantra after all. . . .

I don’t know how successful I have been in my attempt to move gradually along the gradient between preseason expectations and pure resume ranking, but at least I managed to stay out of the top five for any of the extracurricular awards, which, almost without exception, invite derision. (By "almost without exception," of course, I mean, "unless you’re Matt Hinton," which, come to think of it, probably is about right.)

Go ‘Dawgs!