Back to poll results >>

Muffinnnnnnn Ballot for 2026 Week 6

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Oct. 5, 2026, 11:18 p.m.

Overall Rationale: Wins and losses matter most. If you have the same record as a team and beat them head-to-head, you must be ahead of that team. A swathe of undefeated teams went down last week, and as such, several of them leave my rankings this week. UMass, the darlings of the football season to this point, suffer their first loss, and sadly exit my rankings. Joining them is Cincinnati. In addition, Ole Miss falls from my rankings as a result of their bad loss looking even worse after Mizzou dismantled Florida, and one of their signature wins looking more like a bad performance as Louisville loses AGAIN, this time to NC State by a greater margin than Ole Miss beat them by. The Ole Miss defense clearly has massive issues, and they aren't done losing. Other rankings keeping them in the top 10 are in for a rude awakening later in the season. Of course, as teams leave, other teams must join, so welcome to the rankings for Mizzou, Northwestern, and Minnesota. Mizzou obviously got a statement win over Florida, and the other two posted decent-to-solid wins that made me readjust what I thought of them. That "bad loss" that Minnesota took to Miss State doesn't look so bad, and their win over Michigan was by more of a margin than anyone else has beaten them, including Iowa. Meanwhile, Northwestern looks to be a real problem, as that 41-7 win over Colorado is aging well, and for all the praise Wisconsin got for barely beating Penn State, Northwestern showed that they were on a whole different level by dismantling them. Couple that with a close loss to Indiana, and this looks like a team that could make some noise. The massive gap between voters' placements and reality needs to be studied with regards to Wake Forest, as they beat Stanford 57-3. If it weren't for that WF logo on their shirt, they'd already be in the top 15. I am not fooled. You never totally know what will happen with ACC Chaos, but a look ahead on their schedule really seems to indicate that an 8-1 Wake going on the road to SMU is a distinct possibility. Very slight reshuffling at the top gives Alabama a 2 spot boost after blowing out Miss State, and Ohio State doesn't move since they have nowhere to go, stuck behind Texas, after their big win over Iowa. Finally, I'll address one refball game. It doesn't make me happy to have a section of games like this every year, but the state of reffing in this sport has made it sadly necessary. Western Michigan's win over Michigan is clear, and I have no need to even litigate that because neither team is very good. That's simply a win for WMU and a loss for Michigan, full stop. What I've typically done for games where the refs had such an outsized impact on the game that I believe they altered the result, is basically assign half-losses and wins to teams. I still respect the final result of the game and have the winning team ahead, but I don't reward them a ton and I similarly don't punish the "loser" very much either. We finally have one of those with the Pitt-Virginia Tech game. Don't get me wrong, that FG at the end missed, but the fact is that the refs were pretty much entirely handholding Pitt the game for the entire first half, and themselves caused a 14+ point swing in a game that was a 2 point margin. I'm not punishing Virginia Tech very much for losing to an undefeated team in a game they really were the better team in throughout. They fell 3 spots from #20 to #23, and that's all. Pitt stayed the same (passed Ole Miss and got passed by Northwestern).

Back to poll results >>