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crownebeach Ballot for 2020 Week Goes To Eleven

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Nov. 16, 2020, 7:32 p.m.

Overall Rationale: My Covid adjustments are kind of ad hoc, so if you have a specific question about why a team is high or low, you can hit me up any time. In general I am not using the week-by-week advanced metrics -- I factored the preseason SP+ and FPI projections into my first ballot, but since then have been substituting my own football judgment and yards/points margins. If a team is not playing, I won't change my opinion of them, which means Wisconsin and Oregon in particular are very high relative to the number of games played. Also, a lot of teams had Covid cancellations, so there aren't a lot of changes from last week.

Rank Team Reason
1 Wisconsin Badgers In general I have expected Wisconsin to be no worse than top-five all season, but I feel much more confident in it than I did this time a week ago.
2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Yeah, Notre Dame is good. Maybe national title good. I don't have a ton of confidence in Ian Book, but Clemson and BC were probably his two biggest tests before the ACC title game, and he passed both.
3 Alabama Crimson Tide I'm not docking Bama for not playing -- I just think between ND's offense and Alabama's defense, Bama has the bigger weakness.
4 Ohio State Buckeyes See my comments on Bama. The Buckeyes don't play a genuinely above-average offense all season, so I feel like Wisconsin has a pretty sizable experience advantage right now.
5 Clemson Tigers Should absolutely thrash Florida State. If they don't, expect to see them drop.
6 BYU Cougars
7 Oregon Ducks Struggling with Wazzu was weird, but it's possible that the Cougs are actually ahead of schedule (we know Rolovich is a good coach, and they won in their opener). Will stand pat until I see more from them.
8 Texas A&M Aggies
9 Cincinnati Bearcats Beat ECU by more than I expected, but I think a Texas A&M or Oregon would have won by that margin as well, so I can't justify a move up.
10 Florida Gators Would move up for beating Arky by so much, but the teams ahead of them did similarly well or have other resume items to hold over the Gators.
11 Oklahoma State Cowboys
12 Marshall Thundering Herd Slow early, closed strong. Better than the other way around, I guess.
13 Georgia Bulldogs
14 Northwestern Wildcats
15 Tulsa Golden Hurricane I was on the Tulsa train very early (No. 25 in Week "F"), and I see no reason to leave just yet.
16 Iowa State Cyclones
17 Indiana Hoosiers Definitely exceeding my expectations, and probably everyone else's too. I could be sold on them anywhere between 11-20.
18 Miami Hurricanes I mean, it was a win, but Va. Tech is not exactly impressing me. I don't have a strong opinion on Miami for the season.
19 Washington Huskies I didn't love what I saw from them, but I didn't ever feel like they were the worse team either. Idk.
20 UCF Knights UCF's blemishes are a Tulsa team that I think is amazing and a Memphis team that is at least pretty good. I'm comfortable keeping them here.
21 Oklahoma Sooners
22 Arizona State Sun Devils After seeing my own school take USC to the wire, I am comfortable in saying that ASU is outright better than the Trojans and was flat unlucky to lose.
23 Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns Gradually working their way back despite never really being impressive in any of their wins.
24 San José State Spartans
25 Colorado Buffaloes I think both Stanford and UCLA are at least reasonably good, so even though the Buffs faded late in both games, I'm open to the idea that Colorado could fight for the South.

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