| Sign Up | Google+
 

College BlogPoll: Week 1 Ballot

Stay connected for news and updates

Rocky Top Talk's week one ballot has been submitted to the College BlogPoll thusly:

 

Dropped Out: Oregon (#13), Florida State (#20), Iowa (#23).

A few notes:

  • Expect Volatility Early.  I firmly believe that early season polls contain no meaningful data.  Other than knowing that some teams should be really good, a bunch may be good, and some are pretty bad, 59 completely independent observations don't give you enough information to make 120 partitions.  But hey, it's fun.
  • Oklahoma.  Despite losing Bradford, the Oklahoma game was still a close one, and the stadium was a new venue for both teams.  They're still a really good team, but I'm not ready to call their season over quite yet.
  • Mississippi.  Maybe week 1 was just full of jitters for them.  Teams like this are why volatility is a good thing; if they prove to be an elite over the next few weeks, I have no problem bumping them right back among the elites.  But right now, the data doesn't give a lot of support to the theory.
  • Ohio State.  Navy could legitimately be on a top 25 ballot this early, given how close that game was.  Since I didn't put them on mine, I can't defend having OSU any higher.
  • Tennessee.  I really want to wait on UT until after the UCLA game, just so we have something more than a cupcake to judge the Kiffin era by.  The problem was that every edit I made caused Tennessee to float higher.  I see nothing wrong with 22 at the moment, which in reality is saying "they might end in the top 10, but they might end 5-7" - and that applies to every team that could be on the ballot, really.  But the fact is, Tennessee was a team that excelled in all the measurables that can be gleaned from a cupcake game.  There is nothing in the available information to justify not considering them at the moment.
  • Georgia.  Sure, they were on the road and Oklahoma State is way up there.  But I think the loss of Sturdivant is going to really hurt a passing game that was underwhelming in the first place.  After week 1, their performance was rougher and shakier than Tennessee's; it doesn't mean they'll end up worse necessarily, but it does mean they should be ranked lower.  For now.
  • Teams not on the ballot.  59 teams have a win (FIU and TCU did not play).  Of the 59 winners, plus TCU and FIU, perhaps 40 have reasonable arguments for the ballot.  I wouldn't disagree with any of them.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Recent Posts

Stay connected for news and updates

The Next Read

There are 25 Comments. Load Now. Loading

Shortcuts to mastering the comment thread. Use wisely.

C - Next Comment
X - Mark as Read

R - Reply
Z - Mark Read & Next

Shift + C - Previous
Shift + A - Mark All Read

Comment Settings

Live comment alert: Hide it!

Comments for this post are closed.

tracking_pixel_5351_tracker