This week's voting has concluded, and we must bid a fond farewell to the three finalists who had the lowest-rated blogs this week:

(There are only three finalists eliminated this time because of the disqualification earlier this week.)

detpack:
http://blogs.foxsports.com/detpack

DrMidnight:
http://blogs.foxsports.com/DrMidnight

Norcalfella:
http://blogs.foxsports.com/Norcalfella

Voting for Week 2
1. tyhildenbrandt -- Avg Rating this week: 3.62
2. HiPlainsDrifter -- 3.26
3. sportstraveler -- 3.09
4. crookdnose -- 3.08
5  JWatters -- 3.01
6. Jon_Mano -- 3.01
7. mustangj17 -- 2.95
8. DC_Domer -- 2.48

Eliminated:
9. detpack -- 2.38
10. Norcalfella -- 2.18
11. DrMidnight -- 2.10

I'll be back later tonight with the Week 3 assignment for our remaining finalists.

-Tom

As promised, here are my takes on the finalists' second assignments.

In the cases when finalists had more than one entry that fit the "Top 10 list" assignment, I based which one I'd evaluate on which one came in by the deadline and also which one seemed the best fit for the assignment.

I've ranked the finalists based on how I think they did with just this assignment, not past performances, and while we judges can (and do) vote, our votes count no more or less than anyone else's.

And all that said, on with the critiques ...

1. DC_domer: Top Ten Courageous Moments in Sports History 

This was a well-researched and put-together piece, and it shows that while Top 10 lists can be inherently flippant, they don't have to be and you can turn it into something quite serious as well. I thought each point had just the right amount of detail and told you what you needed to know without getting too melodramatic. One of the only issues I had was how the piece alternated between using "black" and "African-American" in the Jackie Robinson section. AP style is still "black," but we use both depending on the context. Either way, consistency is important within a given piece such as this.

2. Norcalfella: 10 Toys Certain to Turn the Average Person into a Professional Athlete

I thought this piece was very creative. While the writing might not have been as laugh-out-loud funny as some others, I thought the originality of the concept made it stand out. And while adding photos is not really necessary for every piece and not something we judged on, they really added something to this piece, and I think it might not have worked at all without them.

3. Jon_Mano: Top 10 Head Cases in Sports

A few funny lines in here and an interesting angle that readers will generally enjoy. I thought lumping in Rick Ankiel was a bit odd since I wouldn't consider his struggles the same "fun crazy" as some of the other folks listed. Also the line in Ricky Williams segment "Pro athletes smoke marijuana" isn't kosher. If you want to make a funny crack about something like that, make sure it's not slanderous first.

4. Crookdnose: Top 10: Finalist Assignment Two

An interesting concept that really dug deep and hit a lot of good tidbits. But you can't hit all the less-heralded sports in a list such as this, and then completely dismiss NASCAR and the Indy 500 because it's not your thing. If you had submitted this piece to me, I would have sent it back and made sure those sports were at least acknowledged. If you want to throw your opinion in there, that's fine, but you can do that when you mention those sports in the given months. They at least need to be included. I enjoyed the "Chico's Bail Bonds" and A-Rod/Switzerland lines, but the repeated mentions of "midgets whipping horses" crossed the line into bad taste in my mind.

5. DrMidnight: My Top 10 Athletes Not in a Hall Of Fame 

Again, a well-researched piece that definitely had enough to make people think and spark some arguments along the way. A good topic to keep the reader engaged and reading all the way through to the end. What knocked the piece down a few rungs was a glaring fact error in the No. 1 item when he talks about Jim Rice's 1977 season. The numbers quoted actually came from his 1978 season. And it also seems the piece was filed a little bit after the deadline. Now, online deadlines aren't the same as they are in the print world where there are presses running and trucks waiting to get the papers out to the streets and one minute off deadline can be extremely costly. But that said, not hitting a deadline, especially a reasonably lenient one such as this, is no way to keep you in an editor's good graces.

6. mustangj17: A Lesson in Top 10 Lists

This had several laugh-out-loud lines, but I wish the author would have just picked one Top 10 list and really gone to town on that one and turned that into a gem instead of just going kind of halfway on a bunch of them. The Ted Ferguson line at the end "Put that on my review!" was gold, misspelling "Leinart" in No. 4 of the clich

To answer some of the concerns and hopefully make things crystal clear for everyone, we will be posting the voting scores Sunday. We hadn't originally planned to do this out of respect for the finalists eliminated and since they don't mean much at that point because the totals are wiped out from week to week.

And to clear things up regarding lexfri. Yes, he is a fellow employee and one of the key people involved in the creation of this competition. Toronto (Kareem) is also a FOXSports.com employee. Anyone else who is claiming to speak from a point of insider info is simply trying to mislead.

And finally, to address another voting item. We had hoped it was pretty clear from the setup how the vote totals would be tabulated, but to clear up any doubts on that, bloggers' average score is what counts. So if someone has 100 5-star votes as their only vote totals, they will rank ahead of someone with 101 4-star votes.

-Tom

We regret to announce that one of the finalists, The_Doc, has been disqualified for plagiarism.

We informed him of our decision this afternoon, and this means that there will only be three finalists eliminated Sunday instead of the four originally planned.

I will not go into detail about the decision, aside from that it was something we took extremely seriously. We regret that it had to come to this, but we are confident with our decision.

-Tom