College Football BlogPoll Week 3 Draft: Clutch-Grinding Time!

After three weeks, we are finally at the point where each team has played at least two games.  That's significant to me because it seems that the second game really stabilizes our computer rankings; like any resume system, they're still wildly variant, but at least the results make a little bit of sense.  From here forward, our BlogPoll ballot will being with the computer rankings.  We'll then investigate the results and see where any adjustments need to be made.

I always love starting with the computer for two reasons.  One is that it's quite impossible to fairly judge this many teams by eyesight alone, and having numbers helps put things in a bit of perspective.  The other is that numbers help reveal human bias, such as the kind of bias that causes the coaches poll to leave Nevada out of the top 25.  (How can coaches evaluate 120 teams when they spend all day focusing on their own game?  Heck, even we couch-potatoes can't even manage that!)

The computer methodology is the same as what we used last year, so this post will suffice as explanation.  The weights are different (and are open to revision), so I'll include the weights in the post below the rankings.  For now, here is the computer's top 25 exactly as the computer spits them out.  This is a draft, remember, and we will tweak things until Wednesday morning when I turn in our actual ballot.

Rocky Top Talk Ballot - Week 4

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Oregon Ducks	2
2	Alabama Crimson Tide	-1
3	Stanford Cardinal	8
4	TCU Horned Frogs	1
5	Arizona Wildcats	9
6	Utah Utes	10
7	Nebraska Cornhuskers	2
8	Boise St. Broncos	-6
9	Texas Longhorns	-2
10	Texas A&M Aggies	--
11	Florida Gators	6
12	South Carolina Gamecocks	-2
13	Ohio St. Buckeyes	-9
14	LSU Tigers	9
15	Auburn Tigers	3
16	Arkansas Razorbacks	-1
17	Kentucky Wildcats	--
18	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
19	Nevada Wolf Pack	--
20	Northwestern Wildcats	--
21	Wisconsin Badgers	-9
22	Fresno St. Bulldogs	--
23	USC Trojans	--
24	N.C. State Wolfpack	--
25	Missouri Tigers	--
Dropouts: Oklahoma Sooners, Iowa Hawkeyes, Michigan Wolverines, Houston Cougars, Miami Hurricanes, California Golden Bears, Georgia Bulldogs, Air Force Falcons, Penn St. Nittany Lions

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "

DISCUSSION

For readability, I'll make a few observations here first, then include the data at the end.

The Top

I am comfortable with Oregon at the top.  They're a very scary team to play and have come out of the gate at full speed.  I could bump somebody else there, but it'll take quite an argument to convince me to do so.  From what I saw of them, Stanford has also played brilliantly and should be top 10.  I don't mind them at 3, but I'm all ears.  Boise is farther down than anticipated, and if I were a little more Bayesian about this they'd be higher.  Should they stay at #8 or move up?  They've only had two games; one against a Wyoming team that fell apart during their tribute game to Ruben Narcisse's death two weeks ago, and one against a Virginia Tech team that played far worse after the Boise game than during.  I can see them anywhere from #3 to #10 and am again all ears.

The SEC

I want to move Florida down, South Carolina up, LSU and Auburn down, and Arkansas up.  Again: talk to me here.  Kentucky is a mystery; they've played very well, but they've played against weak teams.  I haven't seen a single play from their games, so I don't know what to do with them.

Others

Northwestern?  Michigan?  Air Force?  Anybody else look odd?  Oh, and Southern Cal will be removed from the final list, as is our policy this year (so that we have 25 bowl-eligible teams in the ranking).  For now, leaving them in the draft makes it easier to see what the computer thinks of them.

THE DATA

The weights in this list are: 

The Normalized weights are simply the Raw weights re-weighted to sum to 100 and are the ones actually used in the computer.  This maintains the same total point allocation from week to week, regardless of weight proportions.  (Note to the statsy types: I'm interested in re-balancing the weights throughout this year.  Feedback appreciated.)

Here is the list of all 1-A teams, including all scores: