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dusklord1 Ballot for 2022 Week 11

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Nov. 6, 2022, 8 a.m.

Overall Rationale: 1-15 or so are pretty clear to me, 16-25 are somewhat of a crapshoot

Rank Team Reason
1 Georgia Bulldogs Clear #1, probably a favorite to repeat, especially now that they don't have to beat Saban 1-2 times.
2 Ohio State Buckeyes I live in Chicago. I ran a race along Lake Michigan in the early morning Saturday, while the wind was blowing but before the rain. That wind sucked. I had a few moments where I was getting blown around while trying to run in a straight line. It only got worse once the rain started, so I can imagine that the weather played a major role in the game (moreso than people who were not there think). However, OSU still underperformed, but it was more of a 1-2 TD underperformance than the 3-4 that people might expect based on the box score. Unless Michigan can conjure up Mark Dantonio's weather machine, I don't think they learned much that was actionable from yesterday's game.
3 Michigan Wolverines Defensible to put them at 2, but I'm not putting much stock in the OSU Northwestern game, and OSU's win over ND looks somewhat decent now. They're still a clear top 3 team. Everything will work itself out in Columbus.
4 TCU Horned Frogs 9-0 is 9-0, even if they've had some shaky games. At this point I still expect 1 loss because I really don't think they're that much separated from the rest of the Big 12, and they have back to back road trips to pretty good Texas and Baylor teams.
5 Tennessee Volunteers I have Tennessee as the best 1-loss team because they got blown out less badly than Oregon did vs Georgia and have the very good Bama win (although that looks a bit shakier than it did last week).
6 Oregon Ducks
7 UCLA Bruins I don't get why most rankings have USC>UCLA. UCLA soundly beat the team USC lost to. Is it really a brand name thing where Lincoln Riley and Caleb Williams are more trustworthy than UCLA? Either way, I think the teams are similarly strong, but UCLA has a better resume.
8 USC Trojans
9 Clemson Tigers I think it's defensible to put Clemson anywhere from 7-10. I have them at 9. They have some OK wins between teams that are somewhere between 20th-40th. Even though they're not the three top 15 wins they were a few weeks ago, they're still solid wins. However, getting blown out by Dr. Notre and Mr. Dame is not a great look. At this point, they need help to make the playoff, even if they win out.
10 LSU Tigers Does the CFP committee have future sight? Because it seems like their top 10 ranking of LSU is justified ex-post. Maybe they had time travelers that told them that LSU would be ranked 10th next week, but they did it a week early? Either way, Bryan Kelly is legit and has massive balls.
11 Ole Miss Rebels They've beaten absolutely no one, but 1-loss is 1-loss.
12 Alabama Crimson Tide Bryce Young deserves better than his current coordinators. It's tragic he won't have a national championship, because it's pretty clear that he's the most clutch player in the country. Turns out the rest of the team is just not that good.
13 Utah Utes
14 North Carolina Tar Heels See comment for #11, but even moreso
15 Penn State Nittany Lions We've yet to get our annual James Franklin Special where Penn State has a completely inexplicable loss late in the season. Not sure that the Big 10 is good enough for that to happen this year though. They're pretty clearly #3 in the conference and everyone else ranges from mediocre (Illinois and Maryland) to awful (Rutgers and Northwestern).
16 Tulane Green Wave
17 NC State Wolfpack
18 Illinois Fighting Illini Because of how shit the West is, they somehow control their destiny in spite of 2 conference losses. However, I would not be surprised if we get a multiple team build-up of 6-3 teams at the top of the West standings and I'm not doing the stupid tiebreaker math to figure out who goes.
19 Texas Longhorns They have a real chance to save what could otherwise be a disappointing season by upsetting TCU next week. I think they have a very good chance to do so too.
20 Washington Huskies
21 UCF Knights
22 Liberty Flames They have some absolute stinkers in the win column, but they have 1 loss to a pretty decent P5 team by one point.
23 Notre Dame Fighting Irish I don't get this team at all. Maybe they've turned a corner, maybe they'll lose to Navy next week. However, I don't see any other teams as being clearly better and have to give some amount of credit to blowing out otherwise undefeated Clemson and UNC teams (even if it turns out they're both 5+ spots overrated than they currently are). Their defense is legit.
24 Kansas State Wildcats
25 Florida State Seminoles I think FSU is an interesting 3-loss case study. Unlike the other 3-loss teams above them, they really haven't overperformed outside of a weird week 1 game vs LSU. They arguably haven't underperformed either, as Louisville is also 6-3. I think at this point they are who they are, which is a team that will beat the bad teams and lose to the good ones. Very low variance in performance.

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