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Zef_Apollo Ballot for 2025 Week 5

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 22, 2025, 12:28 p.m.

Overall Rationale: I deconstruct and rebuild my top 25 each week trying to eliminate any bias from preseason or what teams looked like last week. Essentially, I reevaluate their entire resume each week. So a team may "move up" if they play a bad opponent and win but someone they beat before got a big win making that past win more impressive. Similarly a team may go down despite a win if something on their resume from further back looks less impressive. I rank off of resume, SOS, and eye test.

Rank Team Reason
1 Oklahoma Sooners They have two wins over two ranked opponents in my poll (Michigan and Auburn). I don't think they will stay here but they definitely deserve it and have two of the best wins in the country.
2 Miami Hurricanes Has impressive wins over ND, Florida (who may be terrible but has a pretty good defense I guess?), and maybe best of all USF.
3 Georgia Bulldogs UGA may have the best win in the country right now over a good Tennessee team in a true road environment.
4 Florida State Seminoles FSU's offense continues to look electric against bad competition. We'll likely learn a lot more about them in the coming weeks. They have probably the second most impressive win in the country over Alabama even though it was a sleepwalking Alabama team (or maybe FSU made them just look that bad???) Eye test makes up for their lack of a fourth game imo.
5 Ohio State Buckeyes They don't get a chance to add to their resume in a bye week and their only impressive win is over Texas whose most impressive play is Arch flexing over a UTEP player.
6 LSU Tigers Their wins over Clemson and Florida are looking less impressive each week. They finally scored more than 23 points though against a directional directional school. Don't know what to do with them, honestly.
7 Oregon Ducks Oregon has looked perfect essentially in their games but their second best win is Oklahoma State who may be generationally bad.
8 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets Win over Clemson looks a little less impressive but this team is battle tested and maybe Colorado isn't as bad as we once thought.
9 Missouri Tigers Missouri looks fun again this year. They may have a Heisman winner at the RB position.
10 Texas A&M Aggies I want to give Texas AM more credit for the ND win but I need them to continue to prove themselves. They look like maybe they can put 40 up on anyone but I'm unsure if their defense can get the offense back on the field. BYE week means no growth for this team this week.
11 Ole Miss Rebels Good win over a decent Tulane team but their other P5 opponents haven't been world beaters. They have a QB situation on their hands thought with the backup balling.
12 Indiana Hoosiers Impressive win for Indiana but frankly I was never going to respect the outcome of the game against Illinois, I'll admit it. I think Illinois was placed high because of their ending record last year but I just never found them impressive. I moved Indiana up from 25 though, so give me a break. I think they can maybe run the table against mid to bad teams the whole season and will lose all the tough ones. I said it in the offseason but pencil in Indiana for the playoffs -it's a cake walk schedule.
13 Vanderbilt Commodores Continuing to take care of business even against bad comp. I'm truly scared to play them.
14 Penn State Nittany Lions Literally play someone, anyone. I think Penn State may be as good as usual (top 10 who can't beat any other top 10 teams) but they just haven't had to prove anything yet.
15 Iowa State Cyclones Good wins but they've all been close
16 Tennessee Volunteers highest ranked 1 loss team. I think they have looked really good through 4 weeks and they should have won against UGA. I'll move them up as they get more impressive wins most likely.
17 Mississippi State Bulldogs I think they're getting disrespected to be honest. Arizona State win looks even better now, but they haven't really played anyone else.
18 Texas Tech Red Raiders I'm still a little unsure of how good Utah was and unsure what to do with Texas Tech but they have looked good against bad comp + Utah (who I had ranked but low last week).
19 Alabama Crimson Tide Bye week means they lose traction. I think each week the loss to FSU looks better and although they've looked near-perfect since then, it's against not great opponents.
20 Michigan Wolverines I had them winning by a larger margin against Nebraska, to be honest. Technically they are lower in this weeks poll I'm submitting but mostly because other teams rose. Nebraska will probably go bowling so it's a solid win but I thought Michigan was a lot better. Maybe it's because Moore was suspended for this game.
21 TCU Horned Frogs Pretty good win over SMU, but still need to see more. UNC win is good for them but god UNC is bad
22 Texas Longhorns I'm tempted to unrank Texas despite winning because I'm just not convinced that Arch is suddenly good. They've played some of the worst competition since losing to OSU and he finally has a good game. They may have a top 10 defense but I have very few meaningful data points for them.
23 Memphis Tigers Impressive hard fought win over Arky who I think is pretty good.
24 USC Trojans starting to trust the trojans a bit
25 Auburn Tigers I still can't trust Auburns offense but I think they may have a pretty good defense that will keep them in a lot of games.

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