Make sure that you haven't repeated any teams!
Honor system 1 ballot per voter per week (I don't want to collect email addresses to limit it on my end)
A wild and wacky week last week. One with ballot implications for sure
A clear top 2 have emerged, and I find it really interesting that spots 3 through 12 are all quite close so that order is liable to shake up in these last few weeks. Keep in mind Notre Dame and USC have played an extra game so they are still artificially high.
I'd agree with that assessment. If I were doing it by eye, they'd definitely be lower. But one of my main objectives when I created the model was to reward teams that schedule tough opponents. USC has Notre Dame plus their 9 P5 conference foes and no FCS teams. (Ironically, the Notre Dame blowout loss is the game dragging them down the most.)
I found today’s poll super hard. My methodology is what it always is: look at the last week’s rankings, look at the results, and vibe my way through it.
The hardest part of this week was when I got to 20, realized I forgot about Oklahoma, and had to figure out the middle again.
I have very low confidence on my picks under the 10 or 11 slot, but based on this week’s results, so do the professional pollers too.
Really curious about the rationale behind Mizzou at #12, given you've got LSU (who beat them) at #17 and aren't ranking K-State or Kentucky. I hope it's not because they just picked up a "quality loss" yesterday...
This week's poll. Computer resume-based ranking system:
Ohio State | 9 - 0 | LW: 1 ( - )
Washington | 9 - 0 | LW: 5 (+3)
Florida State | 9 - 0 | LW: 2 (-1)
Texas | 8 - 1 | LW: 4 ( - )
Michigan | 9 - 0 | LW: 3 (-2)
Alabama | 8 - 1 | LW: 7 (+1)
James Madison | 9 - 0 | LW: 6 (-1)
Georgia | 9 - 0 | LW: 11 (+3)
Ole Miss | 8 - 1 | LW: 10 (+1)
Penn State | 8 - 1 | LW: 12 (+2)
Liberty | 9 - 0 | LW: 9 (-2)
Louisville | 8 - 1 | LW: 14 (+2)
Oregon | 8 - 1 | LW: 15 (+2)
Oklahoma | 7 - 2 | LW: 8 (-6)
Kansas | 7 - 2 | LW: 21 (+6)
Iowa | 7 - 2 | LW: 19 (+3)
Troy | 7 - 2 | LW: 24 (+7)
Missouri | 7 - 2 | LW: 16 (-2)
Utah | 7 - 2 | LW: 18 (-1)
Oklahoma State | 7 - 2 | LW: 35 (+15)
Tulane | 8 - 1 | LW: 20 (-1)
Fresno State | 8 - 1 | LW: 29 (+7)
LSU | 6 - 3 | LW: 23 ( - )
Notre Dame | 7 - 3 | LW: 17 (-7)
Toledo | 8 - 1 | LW: 28 (+3)
Tennessee | 7 - 2 | LW: 27 (+1)
Oregon State | 7 - 2 | LW: 30 (+3)
USC | 7 - 3 | LW: 22 (-6)
Kansas State | 6 - 3 | LW: 25 (-4)
Duke | 6 - 3 | LW: 40 (+10)
Memphis | 7 - 2 | LW: 38 (+7)
Air Force | 8 - 1 | LW: 13 (-19)
North Carolina | 7 - 2 | LW: 34 (+1)
Rutgers | 6 - 3 | LW: 36 (+2)
Arizona | 6 - 3 | LW: 47 (+12)
UGA is starting to creep up with a big win over Mizzou. Next up they have a showdown with Ole Miss, followed by Tennessee. Both will be tough matchups.
Michigan vs Penn State this week will help define who Ohio State's big competition is atop the B1G. I really wanna see the chaos that would happen if Penn State pulls off the upset.
Group of 5 intruders Liberty and James Madison both dropped this week despite winning. Their strength of schedule through the end of the season is pretty weak, so I expect that to keep happening some. However, if they win out I expect they will finish the regular season around the Top 15-ish position.
Surprises this week: LSU didn't move despite losing to Alabama, and Troy jumped a whopping 7 ranks after beating South Alabama. Troy's movement is more due to what happened around them, plus they got a strength of schedule boost with former opponent Army taking down Air Force.
This week's biggest loser is the aforementioned Air Force, who fell 19 ranks from 13 down to 32 after being defeated by Army. This week's biggest winner is Indiana who rose 26 ranks from 99 to 73 after beating Wisconsin.
It's so goofy that Georgia is still behind JMU in your poll. Do any rankings factor into your algorithm at all or is it just record+SOS?
Also, I didn't notice this last week, but Troy is also kind of suspect here given they went head-to-head with K-State and lost handily. But I know computers are weird at times (mine seems to go the opposite way with the G5 teams).
Yeah it's just a part of how my poll is set up. There can be some goofyness sometimes, but it usually works out by the end of the season.
I use the Pre-Season AP rankings as a starting point, purely to give the early weeks some kind of structure. Those rankings are applied as a diminishing factor from Week 0 through Week 6. After Week 6 my rankings are only based on W/L record and opponent's rankings.
Through Week 10, Georgia has the weakest strength of schedule of all Power 5 teams, with their opponents ranking 82 on average. For comparison, the average ranking of JMU's opponents is 74. So JMU's wins are worth more at the moment. Those SOS rankings are re-calculated each week, so they're going to change over the last weeks of the season. If UGA wins out, they'll be fine.
This also explains the K-State/Troy discrepancy. Yes K-State beat Troy earlier in the season, but my spreadsheet doesn't really care who you beat, it only cares about what your opponent is ranked and whether you won or lost. Teams don't get a head-to-head boost against previous opponents.
I like this ranking system in part because it takes all the human emotion out of it. Teams are ranked only based on the results of their games and how strong their opponents are ranked, so their name or conference or my personal feelings of where they should be ranked don't factor into it. It also looks at their entire body of work evenly, so early games aren't weighted differently than late-season games, which is different from how AP and most human polls do it.
Of course, one of the obvious drawbacks of this system is highlighted by the UGA scenario: the best team in the country could be cursed with a bad schedule. For that I rely on the other eye test based polls in c/cfb to balance me out. I bring the robotic analysis, I'll let others handle the vibes.
Here's mine. I still don't feel like fsu deserves to be as high as they are in my 100% gut based poll, but my brain can't provide a compelling enough argument to keep them lower. I've also got Tennessee top 10 again, definitely not caused by bias, no siree. This week will also see either Penn State or Michigan drop like a stone