Our weekly college football feature is back, where we take a look at each of the Associated Press ballots. Our mission is to hold these "experts" accountable, in hopes of improving the AP Poll in some small way. We'll be calling out all those writers who show far too much homerism to the team they cover. We'll point out those we don't think watched a single game, and those ballots that simply don't make any sense. And, occasionally we might even give someone a pat on the back when credit is due.

Week 3 of the AP Top 25 college football poll is out and it's full of the usual unexplainable ballots. Two things I was eager to look at were first, how far East Carolina catapulted up the rankings, and secondly, how far Ohio State would drop after their struggles against Ohio University. The Buckeyes dropped down to fifth which is appropriate. What's inappropriate is that John Silver kept the Buckeyes at No. 1. With that in mind, let's get on with the ballot breakdown...

Worst Ballot: Maurice Patton The Tennessean, Nashville, TN

He made the list last week for voting the Tennessee Vols 20th while leaving UCLA completely off his ballot. This week he upped his idiocy enough to earn him the top spot. Not only did Mr. Patton leave the Vols at 20 and the Bruins off his Top 25, but he ranked West Virginia 16th and.... drum roll please... East Carolina 23rd.

Moron.

East Carolina beat West Virginia 24-3. The game wasn't decided by a freak play or poor officiating, it was decided by a good team running over another. Can we please remove idiots like this from the AP Poll? Please.

Is He Even Watching? Bob Hammond Laramie Boomerang (WY)

Patton wasn't alone in ranking West Virginia ahead of East Carolina, Hammond put the two at 19th and 23rd, respectively.

East Carolina Bandwagon: Jon Wilner and Kirk Bohls

I'm all for rewarding big wins, but these two got a little carried away with the Pirates. Wilner, a regular in this space each week, ranked ECU 3rd in his ballot just ahead of Florida, USC and Oklahoma. Each of those would beat down East Carolina by a couple touchdowns.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Bohls ranked the Pirates 2nd (!) ahead of Oklahoma, Florida and Georgia. So in case you were wondering why there was such a large difference between the AP and Coaches poll, look no further than Jon Wilner and Kirk Bohls drinking the kool-aid and more.

Seriously, What's Up With Utah? Ray Ratto San Franisco Chronicle (CA)
I like Ray, he does good work, but he's making me concerned for his health with his continued ranking of the Utes in the top 15. We've seen that Michigan isn't exactly the usual Wolverines, and Utah's win over UNLV this weekend was hardly worthy of applause.

Maybe he's got something for the Mountain West conference as he slid TCU in at 22nd after a win over D-1AA Stephen F. Cupcake.

Picking On The Pollsters Effect: Mike Ceide WREG TV, Memphis (TN)

Thumbs up to Mike who last week ranked Clemson ahead of Alabama, fixed his ballot and placed Alabama at 18 and Clemson down at 21. Baby steps.

2007 or 2008? Molly Yanity Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I pick on Molly often and this is why. She still has Kentucky up at 20th, Utah at 19th, Kansas at 5th and LSU on top of her ballot. None of those are terrible, but we'll just agree to disagree that my opinion is drastically different on each of those.

Curious 25th Slip-Ins Eric Hansen, Tom Hart and Randy Harrison
One of the great trends each week when looking over the ballots are when pollsters slide in some random team at the end of their rankings just for kicks.

Eric Hansen of South Bend continues to rank North Carolina (4-8 last year) who beat McNeese State by just 8 points in week one. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the Fighting Irish paying a visit to the Tar Heels this season.

Tom Hart slipped in the Rice Owls at 25th after a last second interception pick six put them over the Memphis Tigers. An Owls team that gave up 523 yards total offense to the Tigers.

Lastly, Randy Harrison has been so impressed with Tulsa's victories over UAB and North Texas that he placed the Golden Hurricanes 24th. Good fun.

Homer Herbstreit? We'll give Herby a small amount of credit for dropping the Buckeyes down to 6th from 4th after a shaky win against Ohio U.

Tell the pollsters what's up with your own Top 25 ranking below.

Beating a top ranked team is a huge deal, especially when you're a mid-major like East Carolina University. Naturally, after ECU beat West Virginia 24-3 on Saturday, ECU fans felt the need to storm the field and celebrate.

But what they didn't expect was to get beat down by sheriff John Brown.

ECU police are now investigating claims that several non-ECU police units that were assisting at the game beat the living piss out of at least one fan and shoved around a few others.

And, if this video below is any indication, I'd say that police are going to lose this one (pay attention to the bottom right hand corner).



As you can imagine, no one wants to take responsibility for the officer that beat the hell out of the fan.

Pitt County Sheriff Mac Manning said that though his deputies were staffing the game in brown uniforms, it was not one of his men caught on tape.

“As far as what happened, or if there was excessive force used, I have no idea,” Manning said. “My supervisor at the game saw the video, and what he had seen did not involve a Pitt County deputy.”

Perhaps the deputy in the brown uniform was, uh, some guy just pretending to be a deputy. Yes, that sounds like a perfectly good excuse.

Anyway, the beat down wasn't the only instance of brutality, just the most shocking one. There were plenty of other reports and ECU Police Chief Scott Shelton said “Preliminary investigation indicates excessive force was used in an incident of most concern by complainants.”

So in other words it looks like regardless of what kind of stance the boys in brown take on this one, someone is going to get paid well for taking some lumps from the police.

ECU police were in no mood to celebrate a win [Fanhouse]

Lost amidst the fallout of the Brady injury yesterday was Vince Young - he of the perpetual 65 quarterback rating - apparently quitting on his team, then getting injured a few plays later just for good measure. I'll let the Tennessean explain.


Apparently Young simply had enough after his second brutal interception of the day, which was picked off by a Jaguars defensive end. Ouch. Even stranger, he didn't tell anyone either that he'd decided to call it a day.


Kerry Collins of all people, who came in for Young, even tried to get Young onto the field. Eventually, Young hopped back onto the field, and wound up getting injured two plays later. Collins then came in, converted a 3rd and 15, and led the Titans on the game clinching drive.

If you find it hilarious that a quarterback who once quit on a team spelled a quarterback who quit on a team, you're not alone.

Young's injury hasn't been confirmed yet, but Adam Schefter of the NFL Network is reporting that Young tore his MCL and will be out 2-4 weeks.

While I know Young brings certain intangibles to the game that can't be accounted for in stats, I think it's safe to say that Young is on the verge of being labeled a bit of a bust. He's wildly inaccurate, doesn't make particularly good decisions, and now with that MCL tear, he's unlikely to be the running threat he normally is.

Plus the fact that it appears he quit on his team - after once saying he wanted to quit playing football after his rookie season - probably isn't going over real well in the locker room. Oh, and it's long been thought that Norm Chow was fired because Young didn't like him.

The funniest thing about all of this is that not long into Young's first season, ESPN analyst Merrill Hoge began a crusade about how Young wasn't a good quarterback and would never lead his team anywhere. Most of us thought Hoge was nuts, but now, he may have been incredibly prescient.

Young still has maturity issues [Tennessean]

I'm not often taken aback with college football recruiting stories, but I'll be honest, this one impressed me, even though it didn't quite happen.

It seems that Rick Neuheisel, flush with confidence after the win over Tennessee, has decided that one way to impress recruits is to meet them by landing in a helicopter during their games. No, that's not a joke.


Now, here's the interesting part about the story. Neuheisel actually wanted to land the helicopter on Rancho Cucamonga's baseball field, which sits right next to the football field. He even told the recruits at Rancho Cucamonga that he'd do this.

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with FAA flight regulations, but landing a helicopter on a baseball diamond right next to a packed high school football field is not the best of ideas. Shocking, I know.

As you can probably guess, Neuheisel was ultimately told by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department that he couldn't just land a helicopter anywhere that he damn pleased. So they forced him to land instead at Ontario Airport, 8 miles from Rancho Cucamonga.

Either way though, the recruits were impressed.


So apparently the key to a high school football recruit's heart is not how many bowl games you've won lately or how much TV coverage you get, it's do you fly a helicopter to watch your recruits play?

By the way, the over/under on UCLA getting nailed with a recruiting violation has to now be what, like four weeks? But hey, looks like Neuheisel might actually have a chance to compete with USC one day if UCLA doesn't receive the NCAA death penalty anytime soon.

Your move, Pete Carroll.

Rick Neuheisel visits recruits...in a helicopter [Gutty Little Bruins]

Rosario Dawson is on a lot of guy's fantasy teams, that we can be sure, but we're certain she wasn't on the receiving end of Jake Delhomme's game winning touchdown pass.

After the Carolina Panthers thrilling comeback victory, this was the honest to God UPS Players of the Game Leaderboard shown to everyone. Yep, that's Rosario Dawson instead of Dante Rosario. Easy mistake.



Bravo to the FOX graphics department for making my Monday morning, bravo to Awful Announcing for getting the screen grab, and bravo to myself for turning this into a great excuse to work Rosario Dawson's breasts into the blog today.

Both FOX And Dick Stockton Think That Dante Rosario Is A 5'8" Actress From New York [AwfulAnnouncing]