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311polo Ballot for 2018 Week 3

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 10, 2018, 5:01 p.m.

Overall Rationale: These rankings are based purely on resume.  I'm trying to ignore pre-season hype or tradition.  Certainly, such bias seeps in, but I think it's pretty fair thus far.  I rated games as "Great Wins", "Good Wins", "Wins", "Good Loss", and "Loss". Then compared and contrasted resumes.  

Rank Team Reason
1 Auburn Tigers Best win of the season. Nothing this past week suggested they should drop.
2 Virginia Tech Hokies Great win on road week 1, dominated FCS as they should. No reason tehy should drop.
3 Clemson Tigers @ Texas A&M was a solid win and launched them up the polls.  I'm not conviced that it's better than Auburn over Washington or VaTech over Florida State. 
4 LSU Tigers Win against Miami is carrying them here.  Barely put them here over Stanford and Bama, but I am concerned about "only" scoring 31 on SE Louisiana.  I expect them to drop as the season goes on.
5 Stanford Cardinal Convincing win over two good teams in SDSU and USC.  I don't think they are better than Bama, but based purely on the first two games of the season, they deserve to be ranked ahead of them.
6 Alabama Crimson Tide Bama and Clemson to me are clearly the two best teams in the nation, but they haven't played anyone.  Louisville is a nice win which is why they are this high, but their resume isn't more impressive than those above.  Margin of victory is the only thing keeping them ahead of WVU, ND, and Arizona State.
7 West Virginia Mountaineers Dominated SEC Tennessee in week 1. Better win than those below.
8 Arizona State Sun Devils In doing results oriented ranking, in week 2 with such a small data set, I kinda have to be reactionary here.  No Arizona State is not the 8th best team in the land, but they do have the 8th best resume after two weeks.
9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish They dropped a few spots from last week due to small margin of victory over Ball St. 
10 Oklahoma Sooners Only ahead of Georgia because they played and dominated to FBS teams.  GA's win over SC is better than the UCLA win, but both OU wins are far better than Austin Peay.
11 Georgia Bulldogs See the Oklahoma explanation
12 Colorado Buffaloes One of only two teams with two "good" wins on the resume.  This is way to high for them, but it's week 2.
13 Iowa Hawkeyes Northern Ill and Iowa State are two decent wins. I don't consider No Ill a "good" win, but it's right on the cusp.  They are tough to place, I don't really know how good Iowa State is.  I may be ranking Iowa too high.
14 California Golden Bears I don't think Cal is that great. They will probably finish 4th or 5th in the Pac-12 north. But after two weeks they are the other team with 2 "good" wins on the resume with North Carolina and @BYU.  This is where there week 2 resume warrants them.
15 Maryland Terrapins Living off that Texas win.  It also helps that they went on the road to G-5 and dominated (more than I can say for my Utes).
16 Ohio State Buckeyes Destroyed the two worst P-7 teams in the land. Too bad Kansas isn't next on the schedule.  
17 Kentucky Wildcats Congrats for finally breaking that Florida curse!!!    Is Kentucky really good or is Florida that bad?  I think it's a little of both. 17 feels right for week 2.
18 Mississippi State Bulldogs SEC on the road west of the Mississippi out-of-conference?  Yes, please.  Great job manhandling a solid Kansas State team.
19 Duke Blue Devils Impressive win over a solid Northwestern team.
20 USF Bulls Ga Tech is always a tough win considering their option style.  To do it with G-5 resources makes it a solid win.
21 Penn State Nittany Lions Still punishing them for overtime win at home against App State. They'll almost certainly rise as the season goes on.
22 Houston Cougars Destroyed Arizona. I for one, appreciate this.
23 Washington Huskies Quality loss? That's all I got. Tough match up @ Utah this week. That'll be one to watch. You may ask, why Washington but not Texas A&M?  Well, Washington went on the road to a "neutral site" (what b.s!) and A&M played at home. Had they been on the road and only lost by two, they'd be ranked.
24 Cincinnati Bearcats Beat @UCLA and dominated @Miami-OH.  For week two that warrants a top-25 ranking.
25 Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors Thought about moving them higher. They are the only 3-0 team mind you. While they look good. No wins against P-5. 

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