This week’s A.P. college football poll is out and Florida is still #1. I suppose they deserve to stay in the top spot because they’ve won all their games and they have remained tops each week this season with the exception of Week 7. With that said, their non-conference schedule included a non-FBS team (Charleston Southern) and Troy. They struggled again this week against South Carolina and dating back to the end of September, they’ve only really won 2 game convincingly (against Georgia and Vanderbilt). I could say the same thing for Alabama in the #2 spot which brings me to my first gripe this week.

Texas should be the #1 team in the country. They are 10-0 and are averaging a 29-point margin of victory this season. They’ve played 2 close games this year, the first being a 3-point win against #22 Oklahoma and the other was a 10-point win against Texas Tech. If you remove those two games from the mix, Texas has won their other 8 games by an average margin of 35 points. That’s a 5-touchdown margin of victory. Compare that to Florida’s average margin of victory (19 points–I didn’t include their 62-3 Week 1 win against Charleston Southern because, well, they’re not an FBS team) and Texas is handily ahead. Alabama, the #2 team ahead of Texas is averaging a 20-point margin of victory. Of course, those two teams play in the SEC which means that voters think of them the same way they think of their first sexual experience. In the end it won’t matter because Texas will have its day in the BCS championship game.

Beef #2. Why the hell is USC ranked 22nd? They lost to Stanford yesterday by 5 touchdowns (55-21). Three weeks ago, they lost to Oregon by 4 touchdowns (47-20). Sandwiched in between those losses was a 5-point win against a 4-6 Arizona State team (14-9). USC has lost 2 of its last 3 games by a combined 9 touchdowns and they’re still in the top-25. I understand it’s USC’s birthright to be ranked but they’re in 5th place in their own conference, for pete’s sake. Even the Elysian conference, the SEC, doesn’t have its 5th place team ranked.

And beef #3 is a structural one. CBS’s coverage of the SEC is disgracefully biased. “The SEC on CBS.” “The SEC Network.” Gary Danielson’s shameless lack of professional journalism in calling the games; he makes every Florida play sound like Doug Flutie’s hail mary against Miami in 1984. It’s no wonder the SEC has been elevated to mythical status when they have their own network and its attendant media cheerleaders. The SEC has a total of 3 teams ranked in the top-25 (Florida, Alabama and LSU all in the top-10). The Big 12 has 3 also. The Big East has 3. The Mountain West has 3. The ACC has 4. The Big 10 has 4. The PAC 10 has 5. Of course, the response to any criticism of conference-wide quality is that the SEC is so good that the teams beat up on each other. It’s hard to argue that Florida and Alabama aren’t any good as they’re a combined 20-0 but the idea that the SEC as a whole is so much better that the other conferences is something that’s starting to be seen for what it is: a flawed assumption.