Now in its sixth year, the Blog Poll is a weekly effort of dozens of college football-centric Web sites representing a wide array of schools under the oversight of founder/manager/guru Brian Cook at MGoBlog, and now appears on SB Nation. This week, the Doc is counting down his preseason ballot, from No. 25 to No. 1. Schedules were strongly considered in an effort to predict the landscape at the end of the regular season: This is not a power poll.

20. Penn State. Penn State is … Penn State. Off back-to-back top-10 finishes under quarterback Daryll Clark, that’s about as ringing endorsement as I can muster for the Nittany Lions in their transition to either a former walk-on (Matt McGloin), a true freshman (Robert Bolden) or an untested, formerly hyped sophomore (Kevin Newsome) notable mainly for his failure to leave the competition in the dust and seize the gig already. On the other side, replacing a trio of All-Big Ten linebackers and the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year, defensive tackle Jared Odrick, is just icing on the cake.

But outside of killer road trips to Alabama, Iowa and Ohio State, there’s not much else to say: The Lions should be favored in the rest on talent alone. Wisconsin’s not on the schedule for the second year in a row, and as long as senior tailback Evan Royster can keep the new QB out of trouble behind five veteran linemen against the underbelly of the conference slate, there’s no reason a New Year’s date in Florida won’t be waiting with another chance at cracking 10 wins.

19. Notre Dame. Brian Kelly inherits three invaluable gifts for a new head coach: a) Relatively low expectations on the heels of three disappointing and occasionally atrocious efforts under Charlie Weis; b) A team built entirely by Weis’ top-10 recruiting classes; and c) A schedule that likely favors the Irish in at least ten of the first eleven games, give or take Stanford, Pittsburgh and Utah. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

Obviously, the only factor in that paragraph that could lure anyone back onto this ledge is Kelly himself, whose unprecedented success at Cincinnati – in three years, the Bearcats delivered the first 10, 11 and 12-win seasons in school history in succession – is more convincing than any of the usual tropes that hint at certain echoes and/or the reawakening thereof. The potential of the former five-star connections between quarterback Dayne Crist and top receivers Michael Floyd and Kyle Rudolph is tantalizing, especially under Kelly’s watch. But last year’s first-rate passing game set box scores on fire from the beginning of the season to the end, and still couldn’t ward off another November collapse. The real test for progress will be on defense, where nine returning starters offers hope for progress, et cetera et cetera. The short version: The new staff has plenty at its disposal to make an immediate run at a BCS game … just like some other first-year whiz kid did here five years ago.

[Previously: 21-25: Georgia Tech, Auburn, LSU, Pittsburgh, Arkansas]

18. Utah. By now, the Utes should be past the point of justifying their existence here: After running the table with three top-25 wins and a Sugar Bowl pantsing of Alabama in 2008, they capped a 10-win effort in ’09 with another underdog bowl romp over an outfit from one of the power conferences, then went ahead and joined one of the power conferences themselves, just for good measure.

The scouting report is generic (returning starter at quarterback, 1,000-yard rusher, veteran offensive line, major concerns with seven starters on defense), but five nine-win seasons in the last seven and nine straight bowl wins is good enough for the benefit of the doubt at this point, especially with BYU coming to Salt Lake City in what looks like a relatively down year. If the Utes win there and take one from Pitt or Notre Dame outside of the conference, they can finish their Mountain West farewell tour on the verge of the top ten.

17. West Virginia. My contrarian projection of the Mountaineers as Big East champs over the consensus favorite, Pittsburgh, is based largely on unfounded optimism for sophomore quarterback Geno Smith, an especially hyped recruit last year out of Florida, who took the reins in the spring. If Smith is alright, the Mountaineers can still unleash the league’s most lethal time bomb, senior tailback Noel Devine, while continuing their transition from an overwhelmingly run-based spread to something more balanced (though still not balanced enough to avoid the conference cellar last year in passing yards per game).

It’s not like WVU is about to revive the old Rich Rodriguez-era spread ‘n shred either way, but Smith’s emergence is the key to bridging the gap between a return to the Car Car Bowl and a return to the BCS: With Devine providing the big play spark and nine starters back on a perfectly competent defense, the neck-and-neck race with Pitt for the conference crown is likely to come down to the side that gets a better effort from its new, totally unproven signal-caller.

16. North Carolina. It’s not exactly an original observation, but this defense … man, this defense just rocks. Of the nine returning starters from a unit that led the ACC and finished sixth nationally last year in yards allowed, six landed on the All-ACC team at the end of the regular season. Five of that group are being sized up as potential first-round draft picks next April. In his individual rankings, stat-crunching preseason guru Phil Steele lists a Tar Heel as the nation’s No. 1 defensive end (Robert Quinn), No. 1 defensive tackle (Marvin Austin), No. 1 inside linebacker (Quan Sturdivant), No. 1 outside linebacker (Bruce Carter), No. 2 free safety (Deunta Williams) and No. 4 and No. 13 cornerbacks (Kendric Burney and Charles Brown). With the wholesale draft departures at Alabama, Florida and Texas, you don’t even have to go that far to recognize this as the most talented defense in the country. This is a national championship defense.

The offense is just that bad: Eleventh in the ACC last year in total yards, and tenth in scoring even after accounting for seven touchdowns by the defense and special teams (not to mention the short-field scores they set up, such as the game-winning field goal at Virginia Tech). If the Tar Heels have any darkhorse potential in the ACC, well, first they have to make sure their best defensive players aren’t declared ineligible by way of their own wayward Twitter accounts. But they’ll also have to figure out a way to generate roughly an extra touchdown per game from attack that offers, at most, one serious big-play threat (receiver Greg Little) and a fifth-year senior quarterback (T.J. Yates) whom no one seems to trust to get it to him with any kind of consistency.

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Previously: Just making the cut (21-25).
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.