Back to poll results >>

CFBHurts Ballot for 2026 Week 2

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 8, 2026, 9:09 a.m.

Overall Rationale: Early season gets a ton of volatility in the ballots as we figure out who is actually good and who is actually trash. Expect wild swings until about halfway into the season.

You get rewarded for beating good opponents and for doing so convincingly. Given that this is only week 1 we're still guessing who actually counts as good opponents, so we rely on a bit of the eye test for that.

Rank Team Reason
1 LSU Tigers Clemson might be dreadful, but until we know that for certain LSU gets all the credit for annihilating what was supposed to be at least a decent opponent
2 Ole Miss Rebels By far the least convincing win of the top handful of teams, but history and the eye test say that Louisville was a very strong opponent and that this was a very impressive win
3 Virginia Cavaliers NC State should be an upper half ACC team and Virginia throttled them start to finish
4 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Back and forth first half lead into a dominant second half. Wisconsin is *probably* a decent opponent but time will tell
5 Miami Hurricanes Dominating win over a probably really bad Stanford team
6 USC Trojans San Jose State is terrible but shutting out Fresno is quality work
7 Louisville Cardinals Went toe to toe with Ole Miss, chalk one up for the Quality Loss column
8 Memphis Tigers Solid win over the Mountain West preseason favorites
9 Oregon Ducks I'm giving the Ducks the benefit of the doubt that Boise is going to be pretty good again this year, and by the eye test Oregon was the much better team. But my goodness guys, that was far too sloppy
10 UMass Minutemen Rutger isn't good but they went bowling in 2023 and 2024, and just missed last year. The Minutemen controlled this game from start to finish
11 UCLA Bruins Nice win over a middle-third ACC opponent
12 Auburn Tigers Credit for squeaking out a win over a middling Baylor but improvement better come soon
13 SMU Mustangs Jeckyll and Hyde team, SMU was dominant down-to-down but absolutely could not stop shooting themselves in the foot. If they clean it up they're going to be a problem. If not they're going to find themselves unranked quickly
14 Colorado Buffaloes Like any gracious recipient, Colorado steadfastly refused to accept GT's gift for 58 minutes before finally caving
15 North Carolina Tar Heels Tried their damnedest to lose but TCU "won" that battle
16 North Dakota State Bison Statement win over a good Jacksonville State opponent
17 Ohio State Buckeyes Every team from here on beat the brakes off of overmatched competition. There was nothing to learn from these games so I just kept them in the same order as my preseason ballot
18 Georgia Bulldogs
19 Indiana Hoosiers
20 Texas Longhorns
21 Texas A&M Aggies
22 Alabama Crimson Tide
23 BYU Cougars
24 Oklahoma Sooners
25 Iowa Hawkeyes

Back to poll results >>