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nw____ Ballot for 2022 Week 7

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Oct. 9, 2022, 10:48 a.m.

Overall Rationale: Towards the beginning of the season, I usually start by looking at the AP Poll and Coaches Poll. If the CFP Rankings are out, I will look at those, too. At the very beginning of the season, I’ll check Vegas win totals. I want to make sure my rankings aren’t totally off the wall or something, as everyone is prone to bias. Plus, I simply can’t keep up with what has happened in the off season for every single team. I mean, I listen to podcasts and frequently browse the subreddit, but there are a lot of teams! After about week 4 or 5, though, I try to avoid looking too much at the AP Poll or Coaches’ Poll— I don’t want to simply perpetuate the dominate narratives, I want to add my own, unique take. So, from there, I base my rankings on how I think the team has performed. I watch a lot of games every weekend, so how a team does there is a factor. I also try to remain as unbiased as possible. I have noticed that I definitely give more weight to an undefeated record than some of the more mainstream polls (e.g., UTSA’s run last year). I don’t care who you are or who you play, going undefeated at any level in CFB is very, very difficult, so I often wind up having those teams a few slots higher than other places (though not necessarily other r/CFB users). I have also noticed that I am willing to give a team that is elite on one side of the ball but kind of meh on the other more credit. Take Ohio State last year. Their defense was not great by their standards but I kept them a bit higher than some folks did because I knew very few teams (including the ones I primarily support!) would have any chance at slowing down their offense. Wisconsin and Oklahoma State are good examples of the inverse. Though they are my favorite teams’ rivals, there was no denying that scoring on those two defenses was extremely unlikely. I won’t penalize a team for “only” being elite on one side of the ball if the other side is truly elite. Another thing I try to do is rank teams over teams that they’ve beaten whenever possible. Say Florida State beat Florida but lost to Georgia Tech. Both are now one- loss teams. GT is a pretty bad loss this year but I just can’t justify ranking FSU behind UF if FSU has the head-to-head victory. I know that isn’t everyone’s philosophy but it is mine. In cases of a tie in my rankings, I almost always give the edge to the team with the better quarterback. If both teams have elite QBs, I will give the edge to the team with the better offensive and defensive lines. If that isn’t helpful, I will likely give the edge to the team with the better defense in terms of SP+ rankings. I don’t have a dedicated points system (e.g., BCS) or anything because I like the ability to retain discretion. For instance, maybe there are two one-loss teams that are just about tied in my rankings. If I feel one of them has been very lucky or happened to catch other teams at the right time (e.g., Iowa last year, unfortunately), I will give the edge to the team that I think has earned their record to a greater degree. This kind of thing would only happen if teams have the same record, though, as I wouldn’t put a 2-loss team over a 1-loss team because I thought the 1-loss team was “lucky.” Also, I do not penalize teams with early byes but will give extra credit to teams if they have an “extra” win. So, for example, if Utah was 8-0 and Clemson was 7-0, I’d give a slight edge to Utah, no matter how “good” their additional win was. This is the kind of thing that will work itself out as the season goes, but I believe teams deserve some reward for playing an extra game. Conference strength and strength of schedule both matter to me, but there aren’t many universes in which I am going to put a 8-4 SEC team over an 11-1 (and certainly not a 12-0) MAC team. Now, if the MAC team dropped a game or two, they may go from being ranked in my top 15 to being totally unranked (due to their strength of schedule) but I am not willing to penalize a team with an exceptional record for something they can’t control, like the conference they’re in. Besides, sometimes those G5 teams can be scary! They deserve a shot (e.g., Cincinnati vs. Georgia two years ago). An unorthodox thing that I do is penalize teams for **major** injuries (usually this just means a star quarterback going down but if a team relied heavily on a star RB— like Wisconsin and Braylon Allen— then they might get a slight dip, too). I kind of hate doing it but I think it is the right thing to do. Just look at how different Ole Miss looked in the Sugar Bowl after Corral went down. They weren’t the same team. And you’d better believe I’d apply this same criteria to Oklahoma— if Dillon Gabriel goes down and is replaced by *checks notes* Davis Beville or Micah Bowens, I am not going to assume they will be the same quality of team. It just doesn’t make any sense. (As an aside, I might actually bump Iowa up a spot or two is Spencer Petras went down— though I would never root for him to be injured) (As another aside, my examples here turned out to be pretty good. OU’s offense looked like… well, Iowa’s when Davis Beville was in against Texas. Fortunately, Gabriel’s injury won’t impact their ranking, as I have them ranked somewhere around that Nevada/Colorado/Hawaii-tier at the moment. What’s the real difference between a team being ranked 200 vs. 201? *cries*) One more thing I do is consider which teams kind of “haunt” other teams. For example, **prior to last season,** if I was trying to decide between Alabama or Georgia for the #1 spot, I’d give the edge to Bama, as UGA hadn’t yet figured out how to beat them when it mattered. I’d say the same for Ohio State and Michigan— it felt like Michigan lost to Ohio State 10x in a row. Now, in both cases, the underdog team finally got the monkey off of their back, so that would not apply anymore. Last year was a tough year for this criteria, as Oklahoma State also beat OU and Washington State also beat Washington. But, for some other rivalries, I think the criteria still applies (e.g., Florida over Tennessee, Iowa over Iowa State, Iowa over Nebraska). But, again, this would only be used for a tie breaker if I thought two teams should be ranked right around the same spot. **Another aside since I am updating my methodology (the text I submit, not the actual methodology). Looks like my examples for rivalries might also need be updated. How wild is it that Tennessee beat Florida and Iowa State beat Iowa in the same season??** It is a subjective system but it is one I feel confident in! I have been higher on teams than some others but those teams usually end up delivering come bowl season (for instance, I finished 186th in the r/CFB bowl prediction tournament). It works pretty well for me!

Rank Team Reason
1 Ohio State Buckeyes I know we've been ragging on Michigan for not really playing anybody yet, but it has turned out that Ohio State hasn't played a *legit* team yet, either. That said, they have yet to play down to their competition, are dominating despite*still* not being at full strength on offense, and the defense looks a lot (like a lot a lot) better so far this year.
2 Georgia Bulldogs Slow start but they were never going to lose to this Auburn team in Athens.
3 Alabama Crimson Tide Stop playing with your food or I am really going to start to wonder about the strength of this team. Is this a down year? If Bryce Young is out for much longer, they will drop behind Michigan for me-- or at least they *would* if Michigan looked any more convincing.
4 Michigan Wolverines I know, they ain't played nobody. They have done the same thing as Alabama and Georgia over the last couple of weeks: played down to their opponents. Not a good look.
5 Tennessee Volunteers Fantastic performance ON THE ROAD in BATON ROUGE. Absolutely smoked an LSU team that is a top-half SEC team (at least to this point). I wasn't sure that a Heupel-led team had it in them. I can't wait to see next week's game against Bama. We may be able to hear "GOOOOOD OLD ROCKY TOP, WOO!" in neighboring states. They'll have as good a chance as they've had in some time to knock off Bama and show they are *for real* for real.
6 Oklahoma State Cowboys Dropped one spot but that was more about how good Tennessee looked than anything. The Cowboys might not be *quite* as good as I thought they were, but they've gotten a couple of tough wins this year. The next two weeks against an explosive TCU team and a Ewers-led Texas team will tell us everything we need to know about the state of the Cowboys' defense, which definitely seems to have taken several (fairly large) steps back.
7 USC Trojans They keep winning, but they're winning ugly. Wins are wins, though, so I am not going to be too hard on them. OU fans were upset with Riley despite a great record because they thought the team wasn't executing as well as it should've been and was relying too much on luck. I'm not yet sure whether A) it wasn't luck but excellent coaching to get a team that was less talented than we thought to a 10-win season and, now, Riley is coaching a team that we expected to be worse than it is to a better record than their talent might suggest; B) the issues OU fans had with Riley were (and are still) issues that USC is now dealing with that will eventually surface. Last season, OU was the embodiment of the "THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT" meme (at least until they promptly stopped getting away with it after getting slugged in the face by Baylor). Is USC that meme now? One thing that looks pretty sure right now? They'll have a good chance at winning every game left on their schedule. I have been impressed by the way that the offense and defense have, at different times, carried this team to a win. They play pretty complementary football. However, you might also say that-- rather than complementary football-- they're an inconsistent team. OU fans were also upset about the inconsistency last season. Sometimes, the defense looked legit while, other times, the offense looked legit, but they never seemed to be legit at the same time in the same game. I will be curious to see just how closely this USC team mirrors last year's OU team. Right now, they look really similar. And, right now, especially given how OU has played this year, that looks really impressive.
8 Penn State Nittany Lions Bye week. Absolutely jazzed for the Michigan game, though. We will FINALLY learn a lot about both teams.
9 Clemson Tigers Speaking of teams that can't keep getting away with it... How is it that this team's formula for pretty much every week has been: 1) play like garbage for the first half; 2) play pretty well in the second half; 3) score a lot of points towards the end of the game, some of them in garbage time? It doesn't seem like a sustainable formula. This is another case, too, of a team that is either very complementary or inconsistent. Some weeks, the offense looks amazing (well, really just in a couple of weeks-- other times, they've looked awful) while, other weeks, the defense looks as good as it's ever looked. The issue is that they haven't looked elite on both sides of the football in a single game. Will that catch up to them eventually or is it actually a very positive indication that this team can win *any* kind of game, playing however it needs to to beat a given opponent? I've been much lower on Clemson than some. If they keep winning, though, I'll have to eat some crow and rank them higher. I keep waiting for the doors to fall off, but they haven't yet. Maybe they're not going to!
10 UCLA Bruins I cannot believe that I have UCLA in my top-10. This has been a chaotic season so far, for sure, but this may be the most shocking thing to date. I knew their early season schedule was pretty soft, but now they're into the meat of things and actually looking like they're just hitting their stride. Maybe the Chip Kelly experiment is going to be more successful than we thought? (though, I will say, I am not nearly as convinced as Tim Brando seemed to be... it made me wonder whether Chip Kelly slipped Brando some cash before the game and said "make me look good today, Tim." Kelly certainly seems to have done *something* to DTR-- a QB he was hoping to swap for Dillon Gabriel over the offseason-- who is playing perhaps the best football of his career right now. Really incredible what they've done so far. Based on what they've done so far, I am willing to rank them up here and let the ranking work itself out. If they deserve to be here, they'll prove it. If not, they won't.
11 TCU Horned Frogs I am not sure whether Sonny Dykes or Garrett Riley should get more credit for how Max Duggan has been playing. If it is Riley, we're about to have both Riley brothers coaching P5 teams, because the results have been wildly shocking. I am really not sure how this team will fare when they play an opponent with a pulse on the defensive side of the ball, but you can't argue with the results we've seen on offense (like did you see the catch Quentin Johnston had against Kansas?? And what about that throw??). We'll learn more about this team over the next few weeks when they play OSU and K-State. They control their own destiny at this point, though, and it's looking like we're going to have to entertain Dykes as a COTY candidate.
12 Ole Miss Rebels I'm not sure why they wanted to give Vandy fans some hope. I guess that was kind of them?? Weirdly slow start. I have been skeptical of them so far this year but had to give them credit for beating Kentucky. But what if Kentucky is just worse than we thought??
13 Oregon Ducks Another good showing from Bo Nix (though, I'll admit, I didn't come close to making it all the way through this one-- PAC-12 after dark sure has gotten tougher for me). I struggled with where to rank them this week. They could've been as high as #9 and as low as #15. They *look* better than UCLA and Ole Miss. I'd probably favor Oregon by about -3.5 if they played Ole Miss or UCLA and would probably give them about -6 against TCU. I even think I'd only have Clemson and Penn State favored by a field goal if Oregon played either team on a neutral field. That said, they have that pesky Georgia loss (and I'm just not sure what to make of that now, especially given that UGA has not looked *nearly* as dominant against Kent State, Mizzou, and Auburn, all teams that should be much, much worse than Oregon). Frankly, I had a hard time ranking them in front of Syracuse. It is always tough to put a team with a loss in front of an undefeated team. I would love to get to see a rematch between Oregon and UGA. I just don't think it would be as lopsided as the first game, especially if it was at a neutral site (and *especially* especially not if it was in Eugene).
14 Syracuse Orange Bye week. Looking forward to next week's game against NC State. They are both teams I am skeptical of and both teams I really want to know more about.
15 Mississippi State Bulldogs Destroyed Arkansas. Still have no idea how good this team is. Their only loss was on the road at LSU, though, so it is hard to hold that against them. They've got some real tests coming up over the next two weeks (or, well, at least one test-- Kentucky might just be bad). As I have said all along, this is a Leach year: MSU will beat one team it has no business beating and lose to two teams it should've beaten. We'll see how that dynamic plays out against Kentucky and Alabama.
16 Illinois Fighting Illini They out Wisconsin'd Wisconsin and then out Iowa'd Iowa, the latter with a backup QB playing for most of the game. Bert has turned this team into... well, a Bielema team. It has been a very impressive turnaround. Can't wait to watch the most B1G Ten game of all time when they play Minnesota next week.
17 Wake Forest Demon Deacons This was not last year's Army game. That is a credit to this team. The defense really might even be respectable? (Maybe it's too early to say that, though)
18 James Madison Dukes I didn't catch this game, but they keep winning-- and winning big, for the most part. They deserve credit for it.
19 NC State Wolfpack I am not sure whether they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat or whether FSU snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Are these two teams both really good or both super average? Hopefully we learn more about this team and Syracuse this week.
20 Tulane Green Wave I wanted to rank Kansas State and, frankly, couldn't justify doing that without ranking Tulane. That defense might just be special! I didn't catch much of their game but would like to watch a replay sometime this week.
21 Kansas State Wildcats A B1G Ten game broke out in Ames and the Wildcats won. Ames is a tough place to win, too-- in fact, Iowa State had not lost a conference game at home for a long time prior to the Kansas game. Maybe the Cyclones are just bad this year?
22 Kansas Jayhawks Tough loss but they were in it until the very end (with their backup QB!!) against a fantastic TCU offense. Wish they could've gotten the W. I thought TCU got away with some defensive holding towards towards the end of this one. Probably really stings for the Jayhawks, but they are still in total control of their destiny: if they win out, they'll be in the Big XII Championship game. How insane is that?
23 North Carolina Tar Heels I do not really want to rank this team after beating a meh Miami team, especially given how their defense has played. But, man, they keep winning. And I know May threw a couple of picks yesterday but he looks like he could be a DUDE in a year or two. Ol' Mack might still have a little magic left in him.
24 Cincinnati Bearcats They are making it hard to continue ranking them. That said, winning is SUPER HARD no matter who you are or which teams you play. I just can't justify dropping them out of my rankings after a win even though they ALMOST LOST TO USF yesterday. I hope they figure out whether they're any good or not, because the Arkansas loss isn't looking any better.
25 Coastal Carolina Chanticleers Another team that wins ugly but continues to win. Didn't catch the game, so not much to say. Can't watch em all.

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