Soft Pretzel Logic

I figure, if I'm going to do this every week, I have to actually do it every week. So here it is while I have a few minutes, and then I'm swamped by the Phillies for the rest of the week.

38. Rutgers (21)
48. Penn State (47)
89. Delaware (89)
113. Villanova (106)
131. Lehigh (127)
151. Temple (161)
156. Delaware State (185)
167. Lafayette (162)
181. Penn (175)
242. La Salle (242)

You lose at home to a mediocre (though not bad) ACC team, you drop 17 spots. You lose on the road to a bad Big Ten team, you fall one point. There's your home-road Sagarin formula in a nutshell, folks.

Temple jumps 10 spots after losing to Army, which I find interesting, but I can't put a finger on how that one happen. Nor can I figure out how Delaware State jumped 29 spots in a week, except to pray it wasn't 158 last week and I typed it wrong. But I'm pretty sure I got it right.

My bet with the Hornets is a road loss at Kent State, whose schedule so far includes Iowa State and Kentucky, has something to do with it.

Anyway, here's the Top 10 comparison table.

Okay, this is pretty interesting. You've probably heard by now about the criticism the AP poll voters have taken this week (and as the AP loves to say, its writers don't have any votes in the polls, it just puts the poll together). But I am just not sold on Ohio State being No. 4, nor am I sold on South Florida being at No. 6.

No. 9, where the Bulls are in the coaches' poll, seems a bit fairer, but a home win over West Virginia isn't the be-all-and-end-all. Boston College deserves its spot, as does Kentucky, and it's good to see Auburn's win at Florida count as much as it did.

The SEC is so strong that even the bad teams are pretty good. Seriously. I know Auburn's been whacked around quite a bit this year, but they're still a very strong squad.

Arizona State's place in Sagarin is really interesting. I've got a good friend who follows the Pac-10 very closely who tells me the Sun Devils are flying under the radar and deserve to be mentioned along with the elite teams in the conference.

But what I think this week tells us is this: if a Top 10 team loses to another good team, the polls tend to knock the loser out of the Top 10 just for the sake of doing so. Maybe, given the way things are going this year, that shouldn't happen anymore.

Your thoughts?