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Charlemagne42 Ballot for 2025 Week 2

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 2, 2025, 9:38 a.m.

Overall Rationale: Still in human mode while the computer gathers data.

Rank Team Reason
1 LSU Tigers Handled business.
2 Penn State Nittany Lions Nothing worth mentioning.
3 Georgia Bulldogs As expected.
4 Louisville Cardinals Met expectations.
5 Oklahoma Sooners Did what they were supposed to.
6 Ohio State Buckeyes While they did beat a ranked team, Sayin's offense did not impress. Their opponent's mistakes kept their score low, not Ohio State's defense. That makes it hard to give Ohio State a big boost from where they already were. If they belong, they'll keep winning while others above don't.
7 Utah Utes Impressive win over a P2 team with a flashy, expensive QB. More to the point, dominated both sides of the ball on the road. They also benefited from a few above them dropping.
8 Michigan Wolverines Offense looked good, but was the defense vacated, I mean, on vacation?
9 Iowa State Cyclones Really solid win over a very good FCS squad, but the first-team defense gave up the TD, not the backups. Yes, we all saw that.
10 Florida Gators L I Who?
11 Florida State Seminoles Jumps 6 spots for not only beating a team ranked ahead of them, but making it not look particularly close. Alabama's talent has not dropped off. Beating a team full of blue chips is still very impressive. The only thing that has me worried is my prediction; I had FSU pulling off a great season after *losing* to Alabama. This now feels like a playoff team.
12 Oregon Ducks Behaved normally.
13 Texas Tech Red Raiders Tech is the beneficiary of several teams above them making fools of themselves.
14 South Carolina Gamecocks Virginia Tech is not a particularly adept foe. With all the hype surrounding Sellers, Carolina should have run away with this one. Instead they gave up a safety and only pulled away to two scores with a pair of late TDs. Against a better opponent, those opportunities will disappear. Can Carolina mend those holes?
15 Alabama Crimson Tide Oh no. This is Alabama minus Saban. All the talent in the world, except at kicker, but it doesn't have the disciplinarian it needs to marshal those forces into an unstoppable machine. Was that some foreshadowing for a re-run of the Kick Six?
16 Arizona Wildcats Status ok.
17 Tennessee Volunteers Answered a lot of questions about how things will go without Nico ImmaLeaveYa. Syracuse will probably get ranked if they start winning, which I think they will despite one of the toughest schedules in CFB.
18 Miami Hurricanes Statement win over a team that had natty hopes.
19 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Notre Dame is cursed to never play like a champion again, until they admit they stole our sign.
20 Vanderbilt Commodores Business as usual.
21 West Virginia Mountaineers Standard operating procedure.
22 TCU Horned Frogs While nobody had TCU on their radar before, the absolute can of whoop-ass they opened has some heads turning. I haven't been paying attention to UNC so I don't know why their head coach is that Belly chick from The Summer I Turned Pretty, but clearly hiring her was a bad decision.
23 Texas A&M Aggies Everyone is strapped in and the operator has thrown the lever. There's no escaping the roller coaster now.
24 Texas Longhorns Look up to see my thoughts on Ohio State's offense. With that said, Texas's defense did decently well, but is not the best-in-history kind of elite squad we were led to believe by the people who prove Matt Mitchell's caricature of Texas fans is not exaggerated whatsoever. What earned Texas a four-spot drop was the wet fart apparently propelling the football out of Arch's hand. Any experienced football watcher will tell you there are four kinds of incompletion. A throwaway, a drop, a breakup, and a miss. Arch missed too many throws for a D1 quarterback. Forget SEC, forget P4, forget FBS. He straight up does not look like a D1 athlete at QB. If this is the best guy Texas can put behind the wheel, their season might end up looking like Oklahoma's last year. The Jackson Arnold comparisons write themselves. When will Texas fans start to wonder if Sark is their Lincoln Riley?
25 USF Bulls USF absolutely overran the Broncos. If they can keep up the performance into conference play, they could be the G6 rep for the playoff this year. //// Dropped: (11) North Carolina - L 14-48 TCU || (18) Kansas State - W 38-35 North Dakota, L 21-24 (9) Iowa State || (22) Wisconsin - W 17-0 Miami (OH)

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