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crownebeach Ballot for 2022 Week 14

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Nov. 28, 2022, 11:19 p.m.

Overall Rationale: Resume. Closest computer poll to my method tends to be Colley Matrix — I don’t consider margin of victory heavily but I think about it. I love blind resume tests and will favor the losing team in a head-to-head without remorse if other circumstances are right.

Rank Team Reason
1 TCU Horned Frogs Only FPI No. 10, but SOR #1. TCU has had a harder road to get here than Michigan or Georgia. Do not confuse that with “TCU is better than Michigan or Georgia.” That is not what I said. Read my words.
2 Michigan Wolverines Ohio State and Penn State is a better pair of wins than Tennessee and Oregon. The rest of the line items are similar.
3 Georgia Bulldogs Georgia is the best team. However, the schedule was not especially demanding.
4 USC Trojans I personally wouldn’t raise much grief if USC falls out with a loss, but if they win they’re getting in and they would deserve it.
5 Ohio State Buckeyes
6 Tennessee Volunteers Gets the nod not because of the head-to-head with Alabama, but because I prefer quality wins over quality losses. Tennessee’s wins over Nos. 8 and 13 clear anything that Bama or Penn State did.
7 Penn State Nittany Lions It’s splitting hairs here between Penn State and Bama, both of whom are in the “quality loss” club. Four wins over bowl teams, none over anybody elite. Vote your conscience.
8 Alabama Crimson Tide See Penn State.
9 Washington Huskies Washington over Alabama wouldn’t be crazy — their wins are better — but it’s close enough that losing to Arizona State is an anchor.
10 Kansas State Wildcats Another quality-loss club. But a lot of wins over bowl teams, too.
11 Oregon Ducks Am I giving them a soft spot to land because of Bo Nix’s injury? Even I don’t know the answer to that.
12 Clemson Tigers Clemson doesn’t suck but they’re not the power they used to be either. I assume they will still walk through the ACC title game.
13 LSU Tigers I’m not punishing LSU that hard for a loss to TAMU, but on the flip side, I didn’t have them that high either.
14 Utah Utes Utah is a weird team, man. Florida is one of the worst losses in the top 25. But USC is either the best or second-best win in the country. Upside more important than downside.
15 Florida State Seminoles Arizona State could have hired Mike Norvell away from Memphis instead. Instead they hired Herm. We’ll see if they still have a program next season :)
16 Tulane Green Wave Tulane has all kinds of upside. K State is one of the best G5 wins of the playoff era. But TU’s style of play is almost like academy football in its generation of weird unlucky results for both the Wave and the other side.
17 Texas Longhorns The public has this idea of Texas as, like, the Quinn Ewers Show, and I just have to say it: Ewers kind of sucks. His bad is *bad*, and Texas is a good football team despite his clunkers.
18 Oregon State Beavers This is a great team with no bad losses, but I don’t think it’s an insult to say that Oregon threw that game away, so I hesitate to call it a quality win either. Oregon St has a wide variance to me — could be as high as 11 or as low as 22.
19 UCLA Bruins I’ve been hating on UCLA all year so I will refrain from doing it in this space. The defense is bad (except the pass rush, which actually brings It™️ consistently). The Washington win was really good but an average team would go 8-4 against this schedule, so 9-3 is not the breakthrough most seem to think it was.
20 Troy Trojans Did not think that a loss to Mississippi was going to drag them *down* rather than up on my ballot, but here we are. The Sun Belt has three defenses (Troy, Marshall, and JMU) that can legitimately play up to Power 5 competition.
21 Notre Dame Fighting Irish I take great joy in noting that Notre Dame played the No. 26 strength of schedule this year. It is very popular with Alabama and Michigan fans specifically to pretend that ND plays cupcakes.
22 South Carolina Gamecocks All right, I admit it, I was wrong about South Carolina. I thought this was going to be the worst team in the East. Well done.
23 Mississippi State Bulldogs This is the best defense Mike Leach has ever had. The scoring numbers don’t reflect it because of their tempo, but they held up well against some nasty offenses.
24 NC State Wolfpack Tim Beck absolutely hates fun, but the defense managed to salvage what looked like a lost season.
25 Ohio Bobcats Ohio hasn’t won by fewer than two scores in a month, and they haven’t lost a game in two. I can explain away early-season growing pains against Iowa St and Penn St, two elite defenses — I think they’ll probably boatrace Toledo.

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