Rocky Top Talk's week one ballot has been submitted to the College BlogPoll thusly:
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| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | |
| 2 | Texas |
 1 |
| 3 | Southern Cal |
 1 |
| 4 | Alabama |
1 |
| 5 | Penn State |
1 |
| 6 | California |
3 |
| 7 | Oklahoma State |
5 |
| 8 | Brigham Young |
9 |
| 9 | Boise State |
9 |
| 10 | Oklahoma |
6 |
| 11 | Georgia Tech |
3 |
| 12 | LSU |
4 |
| 13 | Mississippi |
3 |
| 14 | Ohio State |
7 |
| 15 | TCU |
1 |
| 16 | North Carolina |
3 |
| 17 | Virginia Tech |
6 |
| 18 | Kansas |
7 |
| 19 | Oregon State |
5 |
| 20 | Utah |
1 |
| 21 | Nebraska |
1 |
| 22 | Tennessee | |
| 23 | Georgia |
8 |
| 24 | Cincinnati | |
| 25 | Notre Dame | |
| Last week's ballot | ||
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.