In the mad rush to expansion, neither Mike Slive nor anyone else gave a moment's consideration to the added burden placed on the Tuscaloosa News' weekly power poll. As if coming up with 12 funny and relevant comments per week about the SEC's football teams wasn't hard enough. (To be fair, I only averaged 10.3 FRC -- funny and relevant comments -- per poll last year, a very respectable average but nobody's perfect.) Now, I have to come up with 14 and do it with two teams that no one is overly familiar with in Missouri and Texas A&M. I gave serious consideration to immediately placing both on probationary status and automatically placing them at Nos. 13 and 14, but that would deny some really deserving (or, in this case, undeserving) teams their rightful place at the bottom of the poll. So even though they are still pledges, the Tigers (who should have been forced to get a new nickname to avoid confusion) and Aggies get to participate right along with the rest of the fraternity.

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