Back to poll results >>

GenialGiant Ballot for 2018 Week 2

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 3, 2018, 10:19 p.m.

Overall Rationale: My spicy take is that rankings after Week 1 can be worse than rankings before the season begins. Watching two teams that we know little about doesn't really give us a ton of information about either one, yet plenty of people are willing to make bold claims about teams now that we've seen them play one game. That said, I'm still submitting a ballot because, if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I? I've started feeding my model data, but it's all going to be noise for the first few weeks, so I'm sticking with a human poll for now. First N Out - Hawai'i and South Carolina

Rank Team Reason
1 Alabama Crimson Tide Alabama handily dispatched Louisville and retains their #1 ranking.
2 Clemson Tigers Furman wasn't much of a test for Clemson; we'll see how they do against Texas A&M this weekend.
3 Georgia Bulldogs Georgia dominated FCS Austin Peay and stays in the top three.
4 Ohio State Buckeyes Despite not having Urban Meyer at the game, Ohio State was able to take care of Oregon State, though they may need to tighten up on defense.
5 Auburn Tigers Auburn knocked off the Huskies and moves into the top five.
6 Wisconsin Badgers Wisconsin finds themselves sitting just outside the top five this week, though they looked good in a dominating win over Western Kentucky.
7 Oklahoma Sooners FAU never had much of a chance against the Sooners, but this team looked especially ferocious as they dispatched the Kiffin-led squad.
8 Notre Dame Fighting Irish I wasn't very high on Michigan going into this game, so Notre Dame doesn't see much of a bump here; this is pretty much exactly what I mean in my overall rationale, but oh well.
9 Penn State Nittany Lions Penn State needed another miraculous drive in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter to force overtime against Appalachian State, but Trace McSorely delivered once again; the offensive line looked like a weak spot and the receivers dropped a number of beautiful passes, but I think the defense suffered in large part because of the skill of Thomas and will perform better against all but the best quarterbacks.
10 Stanford Cardinal Stanford dispatched San Diego State after a slow start and rounds out my top 10.
11 LSU Tigers LSU dominated Miami for much of the game, up 30 at one point, before giving up 14 points late; while LSU certainly benefited from some questionable (non-)calls, they still looked very good and see a big jump as a result.
12 Michigan State Spartans Michigan State is helped by the teams below them losing; needing a late score to overcome a lesser opponent is never a good sign, but that's especially true when your opponent went 6-7 last season.
13 USC Trojans USC started off slowly, but a big second half push helped them put away UNLV.
14 Virginia Tech Hokies VT put in a dominant performance against FSU and moves up as a result.
15 TCU Horned Frogs A dominant opening for TCU over their FCS foe.
16 Oklahoma State Cowboys Oklahoma State soundly defeated an over-matched FCS team.
17 Washington Huskies Auburn is a very good football team, so losing to them isn't the end of the world, but it does drop the Huskies several places.
18 Mississippi State Bulldogs The Moorhead-led Bulldogs managed to dominate their FCS opponent in their opening game.
19 West Virginia Mountaineers Again, this is one of those situations where I'm not sure if Tennessee is bad (likely), West Virginia is good (also likely), or some combination of the two, but Grier looked good for the Mountaineers in their opening game.
20 Northwestern Wildcats Northwestern struggled at times in their opener against a good Purdue team, but a late penalty on the Boilermakers secured their victory.
21 Miami Hurricanes Last week, I wrote that Miami's lack of experience gave me pause, and it seems that was warranted; poor offensive line play, coupled with inconsistent kicking and punting and shaky quarterback play, led to a rough loss to LSU in Arlington, though the performance of the wide receivers was encouraging.
22 Boise State Broncos Boise State dominated Troy and sees a boost here as a result.
23 Iowa Hawkeyes Iowa sees a slight dip in their ranking not because of a poor performance, but because other teams just had better weekends.
24 UCF Knights UCF walloped UConn in impressive fashion, but it would have been a bit more impressive had the Huskies done better than 3-9 last season.
25 Memphis Tigers Memphis easily dispatched FCS Mercer and rounds out my top 25.

Back to poll results >>