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Doogitywoogity Ballot for 2025 Week 13

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Nov. 16, 2025, 1:14 p.m.

Overall Rationale: I built a list of the top 40 teams I identified, I then build this up from the bottom up and make higher rankings from that.

Rank Team Reason
1 Texas A&M Aggies The top two are realistically a coin flip. In this one the ND win is helping A&M get the edge. The Ags had one of the wildest games in memory, with a horrific showing in the first half, but an amazing second half (particularly the third quarter). Just like I didn’t penalize Indiana for a close win over Penn State last week, I won’t penalize A&M for the close win over South Carolina.
2 Indiana Hoosiers This squad coming in second largely comes down to whether you find Oregon/Illinois or Notre Dame/Missouri more impressive. I give the edge to Notre Dame since they’ve at least beat Pitt, Navy, and USC who are all in my top 40. Oregon has no win in the top 40 as Iowa dropped out this week. 11-0 Indiana is one of the best squads regardless.
3 Ohio State Buckeyes Ohio State is distinctly in third, because the strongest competition they’ve faced is Illinois. Washington and texas also make the list, but that combination isn’t super compelling when the other two teams have top 10 wins. This squad is still probably the most likely to win the natty, but I’m going to reward results over hype at this point in the season.
4 Georgia Bulldogs Big win for the bulldogs, adding a top 25 team to their resume. Along with wins over top 10 Ole Miss and top 40 Tennessee. Alabama loss continues hurting them, but not enough for them to be held below TTU again this year.
5 Texas Tech Red Raiders The dominant win over UCF doesn’t change much. BYU, Utah, Houston that’s a solid resume. Their loss was a close one while their starter was temporarily out. This is a great squad.
6 Ole Miss Rebels I thought this squad would not be relevant at this point, but they just keep winning. Big comeback win to hold of Florida. Maybe also able to hold off Florida’s boosters from poaching their coach.
7 BYU Cougars Dominant win over TCU, this squad is being disrespected by many after the TTU game, but they’ve still got one of the better resumes out there.
8 Oklahoma Sooners Huge win for the Sooners, who I’d been largely discounting since their loss to texas. They have some solid wins, to go along with their losses. They could reasonably start sneaking into playoff discussions.
9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Irish continue to impress and rebuild from their opening losses. This is a solid squad. Adding Pitt to the list of Navy and USC helps as well.
10 Oregon Ducks Biggest game of their season is coming this week. Can they hold off the Trojans and prove they belong or be exposed as good but not great.
11 USC Trojans Huge game for the Trojans too, this squad has actually faced meaningful opponents more than once this year so they’re a bit more battle hardened going into next week.
12 Miami Hurricanes Ranking the ACC is going to give me headaches. Notre Dame is doing lots of heavy lifting for this Miami squad. We need some kind of way to determine which teams with similar records and resumes suck more. Some kind of suck-off contest. I hear that’s popular in certain student athlete families at Miami rn.
13 Utah Utes They’ve got the BYU and TTU losses, but they also have the Cincinnati and ASU wins. Two good team losses looks better than a good and a bad to me.
14 Alabama Crimson Tide This squad has some of the best wins in the country, and some of the most embarrassing losses. I fully expected them to mop the floor with Oklahoma, boy am I glad I don’t gamble.
15 Michigan Wolverines This is a good but not great team. The thing about good but not great teams, they can pull really funny upsets against great teams. Will they? Probably not, Michigans come up short against every other good team so far, but maybe.
16 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets I don’t know how to rank yall. You’re kinda like a less good Oregon, but I really like your qb. You’ll probably win the ACC and be fine but your resume thus far has me putting you down here. Wake is becoming better though so I guess that’s a positive?
17 Houston Cougars Pretty well a beneficiary of being off this week that sees lots of movement. The WVU loss is inexplicable to me. The space game was far closer than it should’ve been, but the wins over the Arizona schools helps a lot as they continue to improve.
18 North Texas Mean Green Continuing to not stumble is going to put the Mean Green in control of the AAC. Only loss to a decently good USF (though in embarrassing fashion). The offense puts up stellar numbers game after game, and the win over Navy is huge for them.
19 Vanderbilt Commodores Vandy's problem is they haven’t beat anyone in the top 40 outside of Mizzou. It’s a solid win, but the Alabama and texas losses neutralize it a good bit.
20 Virginia Cavaliers UVa is another squad I struggle to place. It was a solid win over Duke, but Duke is just outside of my top 40 so not particularly impressive. Very unpredictable team that could force their way into the playoffs which would be hilarious and terrifying.
21 James Madison Dukes JMU’s problem is they have no good wins. Sun Belt has not produced a meaningful challenger to help prop them up, and their loss (in a bewildering game) to Louisville does not help a ton, they cannot lose any other games.
22 Illinois Fighting Illini Illinois has snuck their way back in, largely riding off their win against USC. I probably should start considering cross country travel in some of these in conference 2+ time zone matchups, but I’ll need to do an actual analysis on that this offseason to see how much I think it affects outcomes. Too busy rn.
23 Missouri Tigers Mizzou improbably holds on to a ranking. With a solid win over Mississippi State. OU will almost certainly end that next week and probably cause a cascade of movement at the top.
24 Texas Longhorns Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahabahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahgahahahahahaa
25 Navy Midshipmen Big win over USF let’s Navy just slip in to the top 25 as one of the many American teams fighting for control of that conference.

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