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rob_bot13 Ballot for 2026 Week 8

Ballot Type: Hybrid

Submitted: Oct. 18, 2026, 11:57 p.m.

Overall Rationale: I use a margin of victory ELO system that I hybridize with human rankings to promote stability. ELO is fundamentally a resume based stat, but because it cares a lot about margin of victory it can be noisy in terms of teams that beat up on bad teams. It is on my todo list to add garbage time filtering and a pace adjustment. The helps to not over react to computer noise while also having less inertia than purely human polls. 1500 is used as the value for an average FBS team (currently 64th rated Tulane is at 1498 as an example). Anything above ~1750 is a national title contender, ~1600 usually gets you into the top 25. Dividing the difference of 2 ratings by 12 gives an approximation of a Vegas line at a neutral site.

Rank Team Reason
1 Miami Hurricanes 1782 points In a tie with tOSU, broke the tie on overall record.
2 Ohio State Buckeyes 1782 points In a tie with tOSU, broke the tie on overall record.
3 Ole Miss Rebels 1780 points. Second highest rated in ELO because the system LOVES their win over Missouri
4 Notre Dame Fighting Irish 1769 points
5 Georgia Bulldogs 1755 points
6 BYU Cougars 1744 points. Current largest difference between AP poll point approximation and ELO which has them 12th overall at 1694
7 UCLA Bruins 1743 points
8 Tennessee Volunteers 1738 points
9 Indiana Hoosiers 1733 points
10 LSU Tigers 1729 points. 1st ranked team in ELO. Concerned about this one
11 Alabama Crimson Tide 1720 points
12 Wake Forest Demon Deacons 1719 points
13 Texas Tech Red Raiders 1715 points
14 Kentucky Wildcats 1697 points
15 Utah Utes 1689 points
16 Houston Cougars 1667 points
17 Iowa Hawkeyes 1657 points
18 Missouri Tigers 1648 points
19 Auburn Tigers 1639 points
20 Texas Longhorns 1638 points. Poll is overall probably too high on SEC teams, likely due to talent composite component to the original ELO rankings. I am looking at how to improve this projection in future years.
21 Oregon Ducks 1635 points
22 Arizona Wildcats 1627 points
23 Boise State Broncos 1626 points - Currently ELO is low on basically all the G5 teams other than Oregon State and Boise State.
24 Florida Gators 1624 points
25 Northwestern Wildcats 1622 points - Tied with Oklahoma State right now (tie broken by record).
Top runners up/AP inclusions for comparison:
1621 Oregon State
1608 James Madison
1605 New Mexico
1603 USC
1584 Mississippi State
1579 SMU

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