Place Team Points #1 Votes Movement 1 Georgia 172 5 - 2 Michigan 164 1 - 3 Ohio State 146 0 - 4 Alabama 146 0 +1 5 Florida State 140 1 +10 6 Penn State 130 0 - 7 Tennessee 123 0 +3 8 Washington 117 0 +4 9 Texas 116 0 -1 10 Utah 116 0 +1 11 Oregon 109 0 +3 12 USC 107 0 -5 13 Notre Dame 99 0 -4 14 LSU 66 0 -10 15 North Carolina 62 0 +7 16 Oklahoma 59 0 +3 17 Kansas State 52 0 +1 18 Ole Miss 52 0 +2 19 Wisconsin 49 0 -2 20 Texas A&M 45 0 +1 21 Oregon State 36 0 +3 22 Duke 34 0 NR 23 Colorado 27 0 NR 24 Tulane 26 0 -1 25 Louisville 15 0 NR
Others receiving votes: Arkansas(11), Iowa (10), Clemson (9), TCU (7), Wake Forest (7), Kentucky (6), Mississipi State (6), UCLA (4), Miami (FL) (3), UTSA (2), Florida (1), Kansas (1)
Link to check out the spreadsheet of responses here
I had LSU and TCU ranked 23 and 24.
I still think they’ll be ranked to end the season.
I actually think clemson will be ranked at the end of the season as well, but I’m not passing up an opportunity to kick them out of my ballot
I think LSU and Clemson will be ranked by the end of the season and definitely one of the best 25 teams in the country. But there’s absolutely zero reason to rank them now as 100% of the datapoints we have are them getting blown out. Ranking shouldn’t be speculation.
Zero chance TCU will finish ranked, they’ll finish bottom half on the Big 12 this year.
It’s the classic question of do you prefer a reflective poll or a predictive one. Some people attempt to rank the teams according to where they will finish, others reward past performance. Many try to blend the two, but the implementation is always a point of contention.
I prefer ignoring ranking until about week 5, and then leaning more towards reactive polls rather than predictive. No point in playing the games with predictive polls not penalizing losses.
I think within week 1, keeping TCU and LSU ranked are fine, but if they continue to underperform or other teams overperform, inertia shouldn’t keep them in.