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woakley Ballot for 2018 Week 3

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 10, 2018, 2:06 p.m.

Overall Rationale: Started from prior weeks poll and then moved teams based on the results of the week. Dropping out of my Poll this week were the following teams with their prior week rankings: #20 USC, #24 Northwestern, #25 Florida New Teams this week - #22 Arizona State, #23 Houston, #25 Colorado

Rank Team Reason
1 Alabama Crimson Tide Alabama wins again. No explanation needed
2 Georgia Bulldogs Georgia moves to 2. I didnt have South Carolina ranked last week, but it was a pretty dominant win against an SEC opponent who was knocking on the top 25 before this week. Thats enough to jump them over a Clemson team that won, but played a very close game against an unranked team
3 Clemson Tigers Clemson survives a tough one on the road. A&M is a quality opponent even though they were unranked, but I still drop Clemson a spot here.
4 Oklahoma Sooners Oklahoma gets another win against a decent P5 opponent. Did look great the whole way against UCLA, but they still won convincingly. No drop here
5 Wisconsin Badgers No reason to drop Wisconsin this week. They had to work for it, but they pulled away in the second half to solidly beat New Mexico.
6 Auburn Tigers Auburn played an FCS team and thumped them. Not much more you can ask for. 
7 Ohio State Buckeyes Ohio State moves up one spot for me. Fresh off their annual beating of Rutgers, OSU is clearly showing me they dont miss Urban yet. Big test this week against a tough TCU team. 
8 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Notre Dame drops a spot here. They didnt lose, but they certaintly didnt dominate Ball State like they should have. They only drop one spot, but if they continue to struggle they will continue to drop
9 LSU Tigers LSU played an FCS team this week, and while I would have liked to see a bigger score they didnt lose and they still won by a wide margin. Huge matchup this week with Auburn that will tell us if this is the same old Tiger team or not. 
10 UCF Knights Same as LSU. Would have liked to see a bigger score, but they didnt lose and won by a wide margin. Still like UCF as a top 10 team, but I need to see more from them against inferior competition in the future. 
11 TCU Horned Frogs TCU with a solid win over SMU on thursday. SMU gave a little bit of a scare, but TCU ultimately won by 30. No reason to drop them, but I have a hard time moving them up as of now as well. OSU will be a good gauge for exactly how good TCU is. 
12 Penn State Nittany Lions Penn State hops over Virginia Tech by pounding Pitt. I'm starting to think that the week 1 scare from App State woke Penn State up, and that App State was a better team then i'm giving them credit for. 
13 Stanford Cardinal Stanford solidly beat USC, so they move from 16 to 13 in my poll. They dont jump higher simply because I really wasnt that high on this USC team to begin with. 
14 Virginia Tech Hokies VT won by a wide margin against William and Mary. Them dropping 2 spots is a function of Penn State/Stanford moving up and nothing else. 
15 Washington Huskies Washington stays in the same spot this week. They beat an FCS team by a wide margin, no reason to drop or move them up.
16 Mississippi State Bulldogs I jumped Mississippi State over Miami this week mainly because of the impressive victory over Kansas State. I dont think this is a team that's as good as last years MSU team, but at the very least they've proven they can play at a high level.
17 West Virginia Mountaineers West Virginia move up not because of who they beat, but simply because I think that they are a better team than Miami right now and I think it was an error on my part last week.
18 Miami Hurricanes Nothing happened this week for Miami to drop honestly. They were jumped by Mississippi State and WVU for the reasons above. I honestly think that I didnt drop Miami far enough last week, and thats why they drop this week. Not because of a convincing win over Savannah State. 
19 Boise State Broncos The Broncos move up because of teams in front of them dropping, but I think that the top 20 is a good place for Boise right now. Look for a bigger jump next week if they can beat Oklahoma state, who is just barely outside of my rankings this week)
20 Michigan Wolverines Michigan moves up because two teams in front of them dropped. Convincing win against WMU this week.
21 Oregon Ducks Same as with Michigan. Can't really justify any movement when you play against an FCS team
22 Arizona State Sun Devils Arizona State has shocked me so far. I though that Herm would be a failure, but he's actually done great things with that team so far. Maybe Michigan State was over-ranked, but it's still hard to ignore that kind of win.
23 Houston Cougars Showing the AAC some love. This may be an overreaction to beating an Arizona team that hasn't looked very good so far this year, but I came away impressed when watching Houston. One of the best (if not the best) defensive players in the entire country and a solid offense has me ranking Houston this week. If they can't keep that level of play up this week against Texas Tech it will be a brief appearance, but I think that they can. 
24 Colorado Buffaloes Colorado has impressed me so far. They needed some late help to beat Nebraska, but they soundly beat CSU the week before. There may be some other teams that deserve to be here before Colorado, but I think that they've deserved this spot so far. 
25 Texas A&M Aggies I know that Texas A&M lost this week to Clemson. But they sure looked the part in the second half, and they were a fluke fumble through the endzone away from this being a very different result. They deserve being ranked even with a 1-1 record. 

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