OK, do you buy these explanations or do you think that when confronted, it was a explanation knowing they'd been caught?
Wilmer:
"I had the Tide No. 18 in my preseason poll, as a projection of their finish (because of the tough schedule and new QB, I figured they'd lose a few games)," Wilner wrote. "But Bama opened with a victory over what I think is a very good Virginia Tech team -- it was the best win of the weekend, slightly ahead of BYU over Oklahoma. So I jumped the Tide all the way to No. 1. If VaTech doesn't show much in coming weeks slips, that would undermine the quality of Bama's win and be taken into account when I rank the Tide."
Based on the ACC's "power," I'd think his vote should remain the same. Lord knows any team VT faces isn't going to show much, right?
Lesmerisis:
"I tried harder than ever to abide the first direction we're given by the AP: Base your vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation," Lesmerises wrote. "So I didn't look at my preseason ballot until I'd finished my second or third draft of this ballot. That was new. Then I tried to think about each team as if I didn't even know the name of the school, much less the reputation. I just considered what happened. ...
"Who won? Who did they beat? How good was the team they beat? And here I did consider preseason ranking, because it's a way to judge the quality of a win, and that's important. I can't say I completely ignored preseason rankings and reputation. But I don't think it affected more than about 10 to 20 percent of my thinking."
That's just...well, beyond logic. "I didn't consider my pre-season ranking in my second poll but I used my pre-season ranking to judge quality of the win?"
If he's putting BYU and #2, and he's considering who they beat, he has to consider the Cougs beat a Bradfordless Sooner team, right?
I hope to god Andy Staples continues his legal actions getting coaches to release their ballots. I haven't heard much about it since the last week of August.
