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dukemetoo Ballot for 2026 Week 4

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Sept. 21, 2026, 11:16 a.m.

Overall Rationale: All Human Baby!!

26. Texas A&M
27. Florida
28. Michigan
29. Oklahoma
30. Oregon

I guess I should share my methodology since I am part of the poll now. Here is my current methodology. It will change as I mature, gain more experience, etc. For now though, this is my methodology.

My method changes as the season progresses, but it is all a human poll. Preseason is purely speculative, as in, who would be favored on a neutral field. The team that I think is hypothetically better will get the better ranking. Early on this is recruiting ranking, talent retained, etc.

Slowly through the season, I add in more weight to the resume. When teams have played 5 games, is when I weigh expectations and resume equally. I also view 9 games played as the marker when resume will have 100% weight, and expectations have none.

By resume, I try to look purely at how difficult I think providing that resume would be. This takes into account strength of schedule and margin of victory. I tend to favor consistent teams over streaky ones. In practice, that means I punish teams with bad losses more than teams that don't have good wins. I also do not take head-to-head into consideration. I look hard at the resume if the team's name was missing.

I also try to "overreact" a bit when it comes to rankings. While I try to be fair, if a team gets a bad loss, if I struggle where to put them between 2 spots, I will end up putting them lower. The reason is, I am scared of poll momentum being a crutch, where teams just stay where they are. Moving them forces me to get out of the rut, and actually analyze them.

One other quirk I have is, I believe winning is hard. Any team that is 5-0 or better will be ranked. It causes some silly rankings that first week, but I think it is important. Mainly because if forces me to pay attention to smaller schools.

I'm also leaving notes on games I watched, or have significant opinions. I won't try to guess on explanations where I have no real opinion.

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