Back to poll results >>

jthomas694 Ballot for 2023 Week 9

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Oct. 23, 2023, 1:46 p.m.

Overall Rationale: Rankings should primarily be reflective of resume, what the team has accomplished on the field, and secondarily be a power ranking of what to expect from the future. This week is particularly difficult as there are a lot of teams that to me are very close in terms of resume. I took a bit of a reset this week so the rankings are a little different from previous weeks

Rank Team Reason
1 Ohio State Buckeyes I believe there are two tiers of CFP contenders at this point. Tier one is Ohio State, Florida State, Oklahoma, Washington, Michigan and Georgia. Ohio State sits in the top spot this week as they have wins over Penn State and on the road at Notre Dame. They are number one in terms of strength of record.
2 Florida State Seminoles Florida State has looked much better since the BC and Clemson weeks, have the second highest ranked SOR per FPI and are an all around balanced team.
3 Oklahoma Sooners Oklahoma is third in SOR, has a huge win against Texas and FPI/SP+ both like them. They didn't look great against UCF at home off a bye so they drop a couple of spots, but that has just as much to do with FSU beating Duke and Ohio State beating Penn State as it does anything else
4 Washington Huskies Washington follows up beating Oregon in a thriller to not particularly their best outing of the year
5 Michigan Wolverines Michigan passes the eye test better than any team in the country and have one of the highest game control scores. They've also played the easiest schedule of the top six teams and at some point you have to reward the other teams for what they've accomplished
6 Georgia Bulldogs Georgia has played a similarly weak schedule to Michigan, but hasn't looked as good doing it
7 Texas Longhorns I think the second tier of CFP contenders starts here and runs Texas, Oregon, Penn State. Texas outside of a close loss to Oklahoma has looked as good as anyone.
8 Oregon Ducks Oregon has looked as good as anyone outside a close road loss to Washington
9 Penn State Nittany Lions Penn State has offensive issues, but is defensively elite enough to be able to stay in any game. Can they beat Michigan? I'm not sure, but the defense is good enough to win a game
10 Alabama Crimson Tide I think Alabama is more limited offensively than the teams above them. I think Alabama, Ole Miss, Oregon State, Missouri and Utah are a group of very strong teams who are just outside CFP contention
11 Ole Miss Rebels Ole Miss has a strong strength of record, has wins against LSU and Tulane. I'm not buying them as much higher than this
12 Oregon State Beavers Oregon State is a well balanced good team. Don't know that they can run the table and make a run for the CFP, but this a strong team
13 Missouri Tigers Can Missouri beat Georgia on the road off a bye? Probably not, but they've established themselves as a very good team either way
14 Utah Utes Utah is probably limited by their offense. But they have an elite defense and keep winning games.
15 Louisville Cardinals The next tier is from 15-19. These are good P5 teams who just have games you can't fully explain away. Starting with Louisville against Pitt. They beat Notre Dame so they stay ahead of them.
16 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Notre Dame moves up considerably. The Louisville loss keeps them from being in the second tier, but it does drop them down to here
17 LSU Tigers LSU's pass defense is a legit problem and it's keeping Jayden Daniels from going much higher than this for now
18 Tennessee Volunteers Tennessee is a legit pass attack from being a national title contender. Very good run game, elite pass rush. But the pass game just isn't good enough
19 Duke Blue Devils Duke wore out at the end of the FSU game and went from leading to getting beat by three scores. Not quite deep enough to challenge
20 North Carolina Tar Heels Was just starting to think they might be a contender and then they take the worst loss of the year for a ranked team
21 James Madison Dukes Going to round this out with five G5 teams. James Madison is a very strong G5 team. Not going to have much of an opportunity to go a lot higher
22 Air Force Falcons Air Force is undefeated, but they don't play any P5 teams
23 Liberty Flames Liberty, like Air Force doesn't play any P5 teams, and CUSA is weaker than the Mountain West
24 Tulane Green Wave Tulane could be a lot higher had Michael Pratt not been hurt against Ole Miss
25 Toledo Rockets Toledo is the best team in the MAC and it ultimately made more sense for me to rank them than to pick between the other teams I considered for this spot - Miami, So Cal, UCLA, Florida, Kentucky and Texas A&M

Back to poll results >>