College Football BlogPoll: Week 1 Ballot Draft

by David Hooper on Sep 7, 2010 3:46 PM EDT in College Football

Here is our rough cut for the week 1 ballot. It's due Wednesday morning, but we have all night to hash this thing out and make something that's not totally humiliating to Rocky Top Talk. Maybe.

Rocky Top Talk Ballot - Week 2

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Boise St. Broncos	1
2	Alabama Crimson Tide	-1
3	Texas Longhorns	1
4	TCU Horned Frogs	2
5	Ohio St. Buckeyes	-2
6	Oregon Ducks	4
7	Nebraska Cornhuskers	12
8	Iowa Hawkeyes	1
9	Wisconsin Badgers	--
10	Miami Hurricanes	7
11	Virginia Tech Hokies	-4
12	Oklahoma Sooners	-4
13	Penn St. Nittany Lions	11
14	Mississippi St. Bulldogs	--
15	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	-2
16	Georgia Bulldogs	-2
17	Florida St. Seminoles	-2
18	Arkansas Razorbacks	7
19	Utah Utes	-3
20	Auburn Tigers	-8
21	Arizona Wildcats	--
22	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
23	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
24	South Carolina Gamecocks	--
25	Michigan Wolverines	--
Dropouts: Florida Gators, USC Trojans, Pittsburgh Panthers, Stanford Cardinal, Washington Huskies, Cincinnati Bearcats, Clemson Tigers

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "

The logic, such as it may be, is thus:

Who's Number 1?

Take any of the top six, and I'd be fine calling them #1. Boise State had the toughest matchup, so I gave it to them. I don't know how to put Texas and TCU, so I basically flipped a coin in my head on that one.

Trogans!

Left 'em off. For one, they would have been pretty low as is it is (hey, it's not like they could defend a high ranking, right?). But for two, they're irrelevant to postseason conversation, so it's a little more useful to rank teams that can go bowling.

Virginia Tech

A very tough game against a very good team, and you could argue that they could/should have won. They don't drop much. I felt that just outside the top 10 was alright for now, but since there's nobody else that's really top 10 material, Miami won the lucky lottery.

Florida

Dropped out. They can boomerang right back into the top 10 (where their talent would have them) once they demonstrate the basic things that were lacking last week. But it's early and our only data for them is (a) that they have a lot of talent and (b) that they have no offense.

Basically everybody after Virginia Tech

If you have a better way to sort them, I'm all ears. Seriously, this week told us nothing for about 60% of all teams.

Computer Rankings

Thanks to (a) the Monday games and (b) Sagarin's online rankings data going completely wonky (everybody scores zero!), the computer rankings are kaput for the week. That's fine, so long as it gets fixed within the next two to three weeks. I'll start adding those in once we have 'em.

Slingshotting! Whee!

A statistics lesson: when you have only 1 data point, your variance is 100%. All we know is that some teams should probably go somewhere this-a-way (points up), and others that-a-way (points down-ish). But please: discuss, correct, and let's get something that looks kinda sorta like a ballot.

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Comments

Your comments regarding Florida should end:

“Which is to say, they’re ’09 LSU.”

We’ve mentioned that I’m less high on Auburn than you are after their defensive performance last week. Other than that, it’s hard to find major arguments.

by Incipient_Senescence on Sep 7, 2010 3:59 PM EDT reply actions

I have no problem sliding Auburn down a bit.

If nobody objects to that, I’ll do that.

by David Hooper on Sep 7, 2010 4:03 PM EDT up reply actions

Are we ranking completely off of 1 performance, or are we doing it off of how good the teams actually are?

by golfballs03 on Sep 7, 2010 6:15 PM EDT reply actions

because based on the performance

Florida is off the board. But I still think they are a Top 10 team

by golfballs03 on Sep 7, 2010 6:16 PM EDT up reply actions

More by the 1-game performance.

And if Florida shows up and plays well next week, they’ll likely go right back into the top 10.

by David Hooper on Sep 7, 2010 6:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Just a few thoughts of mine

I think LSU ought to be ranked. They looked solid for 3 quarters against a decent – albeit – depleted team.

I would also move South Carolina and Michigan up over WVU and OK State. USC and U of M looked good against decent opponents. WVU only had 10 points on Coastal Carolina at half because they couldn’t really get a running game established despite playing a very weak d-line.

Georgia, at least over Ga Tech. I think Georgia is very solid, because prob the biggest question mark was their QB and he looked great. On the flip side, Ga Tech couldn’t pass against SC State. Despite a great ground game, they will have to throw against ACC opponents.

And lastly, Texas is a little high. They played a horrific Rice team relatively close. At least they weren’t as impressive as Ohio State or TCU, IMO.

by golfballs03 on Sep 7, 2010 7:39 PM EDT reply actions

Texas bothered me, so I'll nudge 'em down.

I’m fine with flopping the Georgiae as well.

USC/Mich over WVU/OKState? Eh, ok. I can do that, but I thought OK State had a pretty good game themselves. Maybe moving WVU down the most.

To bring LSU in, I’d have to drop somebody. Now it sounds like I’d drop WVU, though that’s a matter of choosing one shaky coaching situation over another shaky coaching situation. Maybe instead of a coin toss, we could just flip both coaches and take whichever one lands heads-up first.

by David Hooper on Sep 7, 2010 7:55 PM EDT up reply actions

You could always drop Auburn

As discussed earlier. I’d also wondered about bringing Stanford in. I know they played a terrible team, but they put up more than 50 points and their defense really only gave up 7 (the punt return TD is not the defense’s fault, and I tend to give people a pass on 50+ FGs).

by Incipient_Senescence on Sep 7, 2010 8:11 PM EDT up reply actions