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Jerrywelfare Ballot for 2025 Week 4

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 16, 2025, 3:44 a.m.

Overall Rationale: I didn't want reward teams with a loss, with a top 10 slot. However, with only 3 games to examine, I didn't want to overly punish teams like Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee who have one loss, all to my admittedly top 10 teams. I wanted to reward GT and Vanderbilt for impressive wins, but not so much that I overvalued their opponents. Unfortunately we won't know the value of Clemson or South Carolina for a few weeks, or the result of the head to head until the last week; So I put both ahead of one loss Michigan until some of that gets resolved. I dropped Notre Dame out entirely in favor of BYU; I do not feel a winless team deserves a top 25 spot, though those losses appear quality, there is more to see out of specifically Texas A&M, and to a lesser degree, Miami. It would be a disservice to other programs to allow them to stay ranked in the meantime.

Rank Team Reason
1 Ohio State Buckeyes National champions who return as much talent as Ohio State deserve to remain #1 until a loss, or talent becomes questionable. Neither are true yet.
2 Miami Hurricanes Probably an overreaction to an easy win over USF, who toppled Florida the previous week. I don't see them having any issues this week at home with Florida, but the close score with Notre Dame might be a problem later.
3 LSU Tigers I debated LSU at #2, they certainly have strength of record. I just don't know if Clemson and Florida are particularly stronger on paper as time goes on.
4 Penn State Nittany Lions Three cupcakes to start the season, but I didn't see anything in those games to raise alarm.
5 Florida State Seminoles It's becoming more clear that Alabama isn't the piss poor team they were made out to be. Alabama @ UGA will answer a lot of questions for all three programs.
6 Oregon Ducks Would have liked to see more in the Northwestern game, but the game was away. The thrashing of Oklahoma State holds Oregon at #6.
7 Georgia Bulldogs Austin Peay was a problem, and I'm tired of pretending it wasn't. Tennessee could have, and probably should have, won that game. But I don't like punishing teams for winning tough games on the road. So solidly #7.
8 Illinois Fighting Illini Is Duke bad? Almost certainly. Does Illinois have 4 AP ranked opponents in a row to prove they're legit? They sure do.
9 Oklahoma Sooners They brought down Michigan, handled their week 1 with relative ease, and had a good showing against Temple. It was a tough choice between 9 and 10.
10 Texas A&M Aggies I'm rewarding them for Notre Dame, away, that's pretty much it. They allowed UTSA and Utah State to score 24 and 22 points respectively, that's not a good look, but we'll see if #10 suits A&M in short order.
11 Texas Longhorns
12 Ole Miss Rebels
13 Iowa State Cyclones
14 Alabama Crimson Tide
15 Tennessee Volunteers
16 Indiana Hoosiers
17 Utah Utes
18 Texas Tech Red Raiders
19 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
20 Vanderbilt Commodores
21 Michigan Wolverines
22 Auburn Tigers
23 Missouri Tigers
24 USC Trojans
25 BYU Cougars

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