Sunday, September 20, 2009

Blogpoll ballot Week 3

This is a weird week, because now we have just enough resume information to actually use it to rank the teams, but not enough that it doesn't result in crazy things like Florida dropping from #1 to #20 or so just because they haven't played anyone worth a damn. Therefore you should take the ballot below as more or less a resume ballot with a very, very heavy perception bias.

RankTeamDelta
1Miami (Florida) 21
2Alabama 1
3Texas 1
4Florida 3
5California 4
6Penn State
7Boise State 4
8LSU 13
9Washington
10Southern Cal 8
11Ohio State 1
12TCU 3
13Auburn
14Pittsburgh 2
15North Carolina 3
16Virginia Tech 4
17Florida State
18Brigham Young 5
19Oklahoma 11
20Houston 5
21Cincinnati
22Michigan 1
23Mississippi 9
24Georgia Tech 19
25Oklahoma State 8
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Utah (#7), Georgia (#19), Clemson (#20), Nebraska (#24).

Explaining myself:

- Guess who the only team is with wins over two other ranked teams? Hence the meteoric rise to the top of the ballot for the Hurricanes. If they win next week they're going to be absurdly difficult to knock from that perch.

- The aforementioned perception bias is what's keeping Florida from dropping lower than they are. They wouldn't have fallen all the way to #20, that was a joke, but with the preseason poll now almost totally scrapped, they haven't done anything to set them apart from the pack.

- Taking care of business is generally held in higher regard than beating someone good and also losing to someone good, but the perception bias keeps USC and OSU from dropping below teams like Auburn, Pitt, and UNC. Because c'mon.

- Two games from this week are having a huge, monstrous effect on the rankings: Washington over USC and TFSU over BYU. Obviously Washington looks a lot better than they did last week. Being #9 is a function of the fact that they pretty much have to be ranked higher than USC and OSU right now, and if I pushed them any lower then I'd have to put Auburn, Pitt, UNC, and the like above USC and OSU and that seemed silly. You might laugh, but consider they almost beat LSU, too, and if they'd done that hell they'd probably be #1 or #2 right now given the reasoning for Miami. LSU is the other obvious beneficiary.

As for Florida State's hammering of BYU, that in combination with TFSU's near-disaster against Jacksonville State means that both BYU and Oklahoma get spiked pretty hardcore. This group might be higher too, but I wanted to reward the teams above them for being undefeated against not-shitty competition, and I felt like it was weird for VT to drop despite beating Nebraska. VT would have held steady, but that win was pretty damn skinny, and the teams above them haven't lost.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Washington @ 9? Miami @ 1? You've lost your mind :)

Unknown said...

Looks pretty good... only thing I didn't particularly agree with was Cincy, given they've beaten 2 teams that _some_ thought would be respectable, and put about as big a hurting on their patsy as is possible, I would've put them up in the "taking care of business" group with pitt/unc....... but that's just me.

Brendan said...

I had Cincy higher originally - I think about four spots higher - but they kept sliding as I kept adjusting things. I guess I just don't see Oregon State and Rutgers as being much good - both had some close shaves against teams they should have handled.

Winfield Featherston said...

Way to have the balls to move Washington and Miami in the top 10. Dane would kiss you if he could.

Bird said...

thanks for not unranking us