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Bereft13 Ballot for 2026 Week 6

Ballot Type: Hybrid

Submitted: Oct. 4, 2026, 2:57 p.m.

Overall Rationale: First a power ranking of teams is created, then it is used to algorithmically determine a strength of record ranking of teams. These are combined to rank the teams, with power weighted higher early in the season and SoR weighted higher late in the season. Power rankings are a mixture of human and computer inputs. Current weight: 74/26 in favor of Power.

Since I overslept and am therefore submitting after the AP Poll is out, I'll go ahead and comment on the teams we disagree most on. Alabama surges to #1 for me. Their performance this weekend was extremely impressive, naturally moving them up heavily in the power ranking. It also moves them to #1 in SoR, as Texas takes a bye week while Alabama nabs their best win yet. I have Alabama with wins over the #14, #32, #34, and #54 teams (by power ranking), while Texas' only top 60 wins are #3 and #15. Ultimately, though, these resumes end up close enough that if Texas had played and beaten a generic FCS team this week instead of having a bye, they would have stayed above Alabama. It's really that close between them. Where Texas falls short, of course, is in the power component. I'm a bit higher than the computers (5th vs 7th), but we are both not convinced. Because it's still so early, the power ranking is still very important, and so they find themselves in 6th overall.

Northwestern and Nebraska are once again ranked this week, though Nebraska falls back to a more reasonable spot following a shaky start to what should have been a trivial home win over Maryland (and Northwestern predictably rises following their decimation of Penn State). I think Northwestern should obviously be ranked, and the only reason they aren't is clout. Their big wins over South Dakota State & Colorado didn't prove anything by themselves, but they made the correct response to how much trouble they gave Indiana "oh, so Northwestern is good this year" rather than "yikes, Indiana" - and that was only made more clear by Friday's game. Nebraska is a team that still hasn't been tested, so I'm less annoyed by the polls' disrespect for them. As they take on Indiana and Oregon in the next two weeks, we'll get a clearer picture of what this team really is.

LSU and Ole Miss, unsurprisingly, are in the top 10 in the AP Poll despite every reason for their presence there no longer being true. The flat refusal to reevaluate anything from the voters remains pathetic. Louisville just lost their third game, this time to a very shaky NC State, and we still don't care. Aside from the game against each other, neither team has a win over a top 30 team (by my power ranking OR the polls). Meanwhile, the Florida team that Ole Miss made look unstoppable came out flat against Mizzou. The good news is, Ole Miss will either prove me wrong or get exposed by Mizzou in two weeks, and LSU gets a shot at Mississippi State the same day. So we only have another guaranteed week of these two teams having rankings based in a weeks-old fantasy. Hooray!

The polls' refusal to "punish" USC for barely escaping Rutgers with a win has lead to them still being overranked weeks later, not a ton to say about that. Likewise, the refusal to knock SMU for Louisville's struggles, or for having way too much trouble at home versus two straight below average FBS teams, leads to them being ranked in both the AP and Coaches polls while I wouldn't include them even if we ranked 50 teams. Finally, the AP's Oklahoma State ranking is just flat out confusing to me. As an experiment though, if the Tulsa game had simply not been played, I would rank them 9th in SoR (and likely better than their current 24th in power), certainly putting them in the top 20. So maybe the voters have decided to pretend that never happened?

Rank Team Reason
1 Alabama Crimson Tide Power: 2, SoR: 1; LW: 6
2 Georgia Bulldogs Power: 1, SoR: 5; LW: 1
3 Miami Hurricanes Power: 4, SoR: 6; LW: 3
4 Indiana Hoosiers Power: 6, SoR: 4; LW: 5
5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Power: 5, SoR: 7; LW: 2
6 Texas Longhorns Power: 7, SoR: 2; LW: 4
7 Ohio State Buckeyes Power: 3, SoR: 16; LW: 8
8 Utah Utes Power: 8, SoR: 9; LW: 9
9 BYU Cougars Power: 10, SoR: 8; LW: 19
10 Texas Tech Red Raiders Power: 13, SoR: 3; LW: 10
11 Missouri Tigers Power: 11, SoR: 14; LW: NR (35)
12 Oregon Ducks Power: 9, SoR: 24; LW: 13
13 Mississippi State Bulldogs Power: 14, SoR: 10; LW: 15
14 Florida Gators Power: 17, SoR: 12; LW: 7
15 Northwestern Wildcats Power: 12, SoR: 28; LW: 21
16 Iowa Hawkeyes Power: 16, SoR: 20; LW: 11
17 UCLA Bruins Power: 20, SoR: 13; LW: 14
18 Tennessee Volunteers Power: 15, SoR: 29; LW: 16
19 Nebraska Cornhuskers Power: 19, SoR: 19; LW: 12
20 LSU Tigers Power: 18, SoR: 27; LW: 17
21 Houston Cougars Power: 21, SoR: 23; LW: 22
22 Ole Miss Rebels Power: 22, SoR: 22; LW: 18
23 Pittsburgh Panthers Power: 29, SoR: 11; LW: NR (37)
24 USC Trojans Power: 27, SoR: 17; LW: NR (28)
25 Duke Blue Devils Power: 30, SoR: 15; LW: 23 | Next 5: Boise State, Wake Forest, Oklahoma State, Arizona, Kentucky | Dropped: Michigan, Boise State, Auburn

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