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TheCid Ballot for 2017 Week 5

Ballot Type: Computer

Submitted: Sept. 24, 2017, 11:07 a.m.

Overall Rationale: My ratings are based *solely* on games played to date. No preseason anticipation, no recruiting rankings, everyone starts out at the same point. Nor is it based around predicting where teams will end up based on upcoming games - I don't "assume" teams will win or lose particular upcoming matchups and rank them based on that. Only on games played to date.Ordinarily my poll starts to look believable in week 5 and quite good by week 8 or 9. Unfortunately, many of the Florida teams have had 1 or 2 cancellations due to Irma, having played only 2 or 3 games. This not only affects them on the first level - they don't have enough games for meaningful calculations - but on the second level, as *their opponents* often also don't have enough games for meaningful calculations. UCF is the most glaring example - with their only two opponents so far being Maryland and FIU, each of which has only 3 games (and a 2-1 record), the algorithms think UCF is a powerhouse. Every opponent they've played is a team that ONLY LOST TO UCF! Holy shit! UCF must be good!...and that's how they end up at #3.Don't read too much into it.Every year I've worked on my polling and every year they get better - but this isn't something I'm going to introduce changes for. Once we get up to 7 or 8 games per team and the polls actually start to matter, the system will look better anyway. I've got changes I plan to work on, but they aren't going to be aimed at this particular problem.

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