Mandel does good.

Wow – a Stewart Mandel mailbag that I not only find unobjectionable, but one that I’m in considerable agreement with.  I feel like an ornithologist who scores a rare bird sighting.

Consider these points he makes:

• A.J. Green is one of the two best receivers in the country.
• Virginia Tech – great ACC team, not so much as a national title contender.
• Jimmy Clausen needs to produce against a legitimate team before the Heisman chest beating should start, Irish fans.
• Auburn deserves to be ranked.

Normally if he’s got a mailbag with one good observation like any of those, he’s met his quota, so this one’s memorable.  But I think he makes his best point of the week in his first answer about Boise State.  He’s in agreement with most observers that if things play out as expected, it’s not likely that we’ll see the Broncos in the title game.  Then he goes on to say this:

… realistically the Broncos would not take down a Florida or Texas in a championship setting, and there will probably be any number of other teams with better résumés. But the pollsters have set a precedent by ranking Boise this high this soon. If they suddenly turn around at the end of the season and blatantly manipulate the rankings to exclude the Broncos, the BCS is going to have yet another credibility issue on its hands.

That’s good.  And it’s another reason to question the usefulness of preseason and early season polls.

In 2007, Georgia fans were unhappy with what was perceived as the shenanigans behind the last regular season poll after West Virginia lost.  The potential uproar over Boise State’s final ranking has the potential to be much uglier, for a number of reasons.

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UPDATE: Michael Elkon parses Mandel, past and present, on his Boise State point.

How exactly is it “blatant manipulat[ion]” for the voters to reward teams for big wins by placing them over Boise State? Mandel’s characterization concerns me because it creates a narrative for the Orrin Hatches of the world to complain when Boise gets put behind teams that defeat quality opponents.

I concede that Michael has a legitimate concern here, but I think that what Mandel refers to as blatant manipulation is more akin to what happened in the polls at the end of 2007 after West Virginia lost.  In other words, if there’s an organic fall in the polls by the Broncos as the voters sour on their strength of schedule, that’s one thing, but if there’s a drop in the last regular season poll because the voters suddenly have a visceral reaction to the thought of BSU playing in the title game, that’s another.

Um… did I just defend Stewart Mandel?  My bad.