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PrimalCookie Ballot for 2023 Week 4

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 17, 2023, 6:19 p.m.

Overall Rationale: My computer is now slightly usable, but still has really weird takes due to the small sample size (like #21 San Diego State). It'll be like that until around week 6, so instead y’all get my bad human rankings. Hooray!

Rank Team Reason
1 Washington Huskies That was, uh, impressive. Wow. Washington has now faced 3 opponents and blown all of them out of the water, with their latest victim being Michigan State in Lansing. Of course there's the context around Tucker and all that, but that doesn't diminish what the Huskies are doing. With Georgia and FSU struggling this week, Washington jumps 7 spots and is my new #1.
2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Another week, another blowout for Notre Dame. This team just feels different than their previous ones, I can't really explain it but yeah. Massive game against Ohio State this week, we'll find out how legit they are.
3 Texas Longhorns Texas also had an early scare vs a seemingly pretty good Wyoming, but they pulled away late. Alabama win looks a lot worse this week than it did last week, but it’s still really good.
4 Florida State Seminoles FSU got caught looking ahead to Clemson. That’s pretty much the only explanation for what we saw yesterday. I’m not fading them just yet - trap games happen, even to the best teams - but it wasn’t a promising sight.
5 Georgia Bulldogs Am I overreacting? Yes. Absolutely. But, at the same time, I think it’s becoming clearer and clearer that this is not the same Georgia from the last two years. They dominated the second half to put SC away, but I’m still fairly worried about them now.
6 USC Trojans Dropped in the off week? Well, ND and especially Washington earned it, so yeah. Not much else to say.
7 Ohio State Buckeyes Oh hi there OSU offense. Nice of you to show up, and just in time too. We'll find out which of Notre Dame or Ohio State (or both/neither) are legit this week.
8 Michigan Wolverines Yep, it's another blowout vs a G5. We'll finally start to find out who this Michigan team is this week against a Rutgers team that looks better than expected.
9 Penn State Nittany Lions A comfortable road win is always good. WVU win's looking a little better now too, although that could just be Pitt sucking.
10 Oklahoma Sooners Another huge blowout vs a G5, this time at Tulsa. Looking at the schedule, their first real test won't be until Texas 3 weeks from now, but as long as they keep winning like that I'll keep rewarding it.
11 Utah Utes The Florida win looks a lot better now than it did at the time, while the Baylor win... looks about the same tbh. Still 2 P5 wins, that's pretty good.
12 Ole Miss Rebels @ Tulane was already an impressive win and now they've added a blowout over Georgia Tech to the list. Brutal schedule the next 2 weeks with @ Alabama and vs LSU.
13 Miami Hurricanes I am fully on board the Miami train. The A&M win is still impressive, the Lesser Miami win is more impressive now that they beat Cincy, and they took care of business as expected vs Bethune-Cookman. @ Temple might be a trap game before the Canes open ACC play.
14 Oregon Ducks After the closer-than-expected win over Texas Tech, Oregon's back on schedule by dominating Hawaii. They get Colorado this week, which should be a really interesting game.
15 LSU Tigers Ah, there's the LSU we thought we'd be seeing before the start of the season. MSU isn't exactly a top tier team but they seem decent enough, they beat Arizona at least. Let's see if they can keep it up now that SEC play's in full swing.
16 North Carolina Tar Heels Yet another team with a week 1 win that looks better than initially advertised. Unlike Duke, the Big Ten team UNC beat is actually half decent, so they go ahead for now.
17 Duke Blue Devils Duke keeps chugging along after their massive Clemson win. Northwestern is officially a P5 win, but come on now. ND-Duke in week 5 will be incredibly intriguing, even if the Irish lose to Ohio State this week.
18 Tennessee Volunteers In a ballot filled with overreactions, I don't want to overreact to Tennessee's loss just yet. It's well known that they're cursed here. If they struggle again next week vs UTSA then I'll probably unrank them, but right now they fit here in the late teens.
19 Washington State Cougars Aaaaaaaaaand another team whose week 1 win looks better now. Wisconsin's still a good one as well. Excited for the Pac-2 Championship Game this week!
20 Oregon State Beavers The streak of massive blowouts is over, but San Diego State's no slouch so that's still a solid win. As mentioned above, I'm excited for the P2 CCG.
21 Colorado Buffaloes Incredibly entertaining game... probably not the greatest sign for the team. They've got Oregon coming up, I'm very interested to see that.
22 Fresno State Bulldogs Sir, a second P5 win has hit the Bulldogs. Yes, they went to OT against Eastern Washington, but I think Fresno State's legit. You don't demolish a Pac team, even if it's Arizona State, if you're not.
23 UCLA Bruins UCLA hasn't had a P5 win, but they've looked solid so far. We'll find out just how solid this week vs Utah.
24 Alabama Crimson Tide Well, maybe I was a bit quick to give Bama the benefit of the doubt last week. I'm having them in here because it'd seem wrong not to, and because there aren't really any other obvious candidates (no, I'm not ranking Iowa or especially Florida, we all saw how that turned out for us after Utah last year), but yeesh. They're going to need to make big changes quickly or this could be the worst Alabama team since 2007.
25 UCF Knights Is UCF the best non-OUT team in the Big 12? Last week I thought it was Kansas State and then Kansas, but KSU lost at Missouri and the Jayhawks got into a dogfight with Nevada, one of the worst FBS teams in the country. The Knights blew out a couple cupcakes and just barely got past Boise State in week 2, but that's an understandable performance at least.

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