The “Who Will Win the Conference” Contest expired today at noon, so today I’ll shift my attention to the Non-Conference Poll. I find this poll fascinating because there are some intriguing non-conference games that can make or break a season. To name a few, I think the Virginia Tech/Boise St, Penn St/Alabama, Oklahoma/Florida St and Miami, Fl/Ohio St games are definitely ones that will make or break a season for either team. If you visit the homepage right now, you can get a head start on voting in the Non-Conference Poll with all the non-conference games. To see where you rank against other voters, as soon as your vote is entered in, you will see the % stacked with or against you.

In the next day or two the non-BCS conferences will be added on the front page. The Non-Conference Poll will run until Sunday, Aug 29th. On Monday the 30th, look for the Weekly Polls to start. There are games every day Thursday September 2nd thru Monday September 6th as the first week of the season looks to kick off with a bang! Weekly prizes will be awarded throughout the season.

I have gotten a couple of suggestions to put up my initial FBS power ratings that will be updated weekly throughout the season. If you are a follower of my magazine, I am sure you are familiar with the fact that I have NINE different sets of power ratings that I create each preseason to give me 9 different ways of analyzing a team. One is based on the individual talent level and performance of each position on each team and those are added up for the rating. Another is based on my Power Plays numbers, which include rushing and passing offenses, defenses and special teams.

As for the ratings listed below, these are my Plus/Minus ratings. I first take last year’s final Plus/Minus ratings, which are calculated mostly by the score of each game last year and the strength of opponents played. Losing to Alabama by 5 would move a team up in the ratings (Alabama would have been expected to win big), while beating WKU by 15 in 2009 would probably have moved the same team down. I then take my aforementioned Plus/Minus ratings (see page 305 of the magazine) and add them to the totals. Some teams are weaker than last year and drop in the rankings, while the ones that are improved move up. Is this the main set of ratings I use? No, that would be my Power Poll rankings, which are a combination of the 9 sets. This is a solid set of numbers and what I have noticed is it most closely resembles what the general perception of each team is heading into 2010.

Current Power Ratings By Conference

Only 19 Days Until the First College Football Game!!