1. Oregon
2. Texas
3. Penn State
4. Miami
5. Ohio State
6. Georgia
7. Iowa State
8. BYU
9. Alabama
10. LSU
11. Clemson
12. Boise State
13. Texas A&M
14. Tennessee
15. Notre Dame
16. Pitt
17. Indiana
18. Kansas State
19. Ole Miss
20. SMU
21. Missouri
22. Army
23. Navy
24. Arizona State
25. Liberty

Human poll. Quick overview. I try to make the poll a blind resume, as in I don’t care about head to head. I prefer consistency over peaks (2 wins over a mid program will rank higher than a win against a top and a loss to a bottom. ). 3. If you are 5-0 or better, you get an auto ranking.

Just for fun, because the end was really hard, here are my next 5 out, not in any particular order

Illinois, Syracuse, Texas Tech, UNLV, Washington State

This was a fun week to try and solve. I don’t love a bunch of my placements, but it sure is fun.

Guess what - I’m back and this week I’m just going to submit my awful computer poll in its completeness because where is the fun in being rational.

I’ve modified the methodology slightly, but it’s still incredibly rudimentary and it hates two loss teams which is good because I hate them too. It still really favors teams that haven’t lost, but I’ve added some SOS and Conference Strength weight, so it kind of keeps teams in check but not really.

1. Oregon
2. Texas
3. BYU
4. Pittsburgh
5. Miami (FL)
6. Indiana
7. Penn State
8. Iowa State
9. Army
10. Texas Tech
11. Navy
12. Liberty
13. Kansas State
14. Texas A&M
15. Clemson
16. LSU
17. Nebraska
18. Boise State
19. Notre Dame
20. SMU
21. Syracuse
22. Alabama
23. James Madison
24. Ohio State
25. UL Monroe

Some fun facts: -It rates the SEC highest of all conferences (I have each conference start out level and it adjusts their strength based on out-of-conference performance; I haven’t actually looked at these records so I can’t speak to the validity of it). Followed by: Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 (congrats OSU and WSU for keeping it above the Group of 5 conferences). -It thinks that Florida State has had the more difficult schedule up to this point and that Army has had the softest.

Here is my ballot from my computer poll:

1. Texas
2. Indiana
3. Oregon
4. BYU
5. Miami
6. Penn State
7. Army
8. Iowa State
9. Ohio State
10. Clemson
11. James Madison
12. Texas Tech
13. Pittsburgh
14. Navy
15. Kansas State
16. SMU
17. Notre Dame
18. Texas A&M
19. LSU
20. Nebraska
21. Boise State
22. Sam Houston
23. Arizona State
24. Ole Miss
25. Tennessee

Here’s my ballot, as always my methodology is fuck you I do what I want

1. Texas
2. Oregon
3. Georgia
4. LSU
5. Miami (FL)
6. Tennessee
7. Ohio State
8. Clemson
9. Penn State
10. Iowa State
11. UNLV
12. Notre Dame
13. Army
14. Indiana
15. Alabama
16. Nebraska
17. BYU
18. Michigan
19. Boise State
20. Navy
21. Illinois
22. Vanderbilt
23. Pittsburgh
24. Kentucky
25. Oklahoma

Last 2 spots aren’t SEC bias, no siree

Hey everyone! Sorry for being silent the first half of this season…real life got in the way of football polling. But I’m back, and I’ve made some changes to my algorithm from last year. The overview/highlights:

• Fully computer poll, based primarily on the ranking of your opponents and secondarily how much your margin of victory/defeat was
• The full season is re-run each week with the current week’s rankings. So if you beat a top-10 team in Week 1, but later in the season that top-10 team isn’t ranked, then that win doesn’t benefit your current ranking as much as it originally did
• Poll is agnostic towards conference, pre-season rankings, weekly AP polls, etc. There aren’t any name recognition bumps here, it’s purely based on resume
• The number in parenthesis after the team’s name are the behind-the-scenes points that determines the ranking (on a scale from 1 to 134), so you can get an idea of how closely some teams are ranked to each other (an how much stronger Texas is than the next team)

1. Texas (1) | 6 - 0 | LW: 2 (+1)
2. Oregon (11.79) | 6 - 0 | LW: 3 (+1)
3. BYU (13.85) | 6 - 0 | LW: 6 (+3)
4. Ohio State (14.85) | 5 - 1 | LW: 1 (-3)
5. Indiana (15.21) | 6 - 0 | LW: 5 ( - )
6. Penn State (16.25) | 6 - 0 | LW: 4 (-2)
7. Iowa State (17.42) | 6 - 0 | LW: 9 (+2)
8. Miami (17.69) | 6 - 0 | LW: 8 ( - )
9. Alabama (18.09) | 5 - 1 | LW: 7 (-2)
10. Army (21.81) | 6 - 0 | LW: 11 (+1)
11. Notre Dame (23.17) | 5 - 1 | LW: 16 (+5)
12. Navy (23.17) | 5 - 0 | LW: 10 (-2)
13. Pittsburgh (23.88) | 6 - 0 | LW: 13 ( - )
14. Boise State (26.03) | 5 - 1 | LW: 17 (+3)
15. Texas A&M (27.32) | 5 - 1 | LW: 15 ( - )
16. Georgia (28.7) | 5 - 1 | LW: 12 (-4)
17. Kansas State (28.76) | 5 - 1 | LW: 18 (+1)
18. SMU (28.87) | 5 - 1 | LW: 19 (+1)
19. Clemson (30.12) | 5 - 1 | LW: 20 (+1)
20. James Madison (30.21) | 5 - 1 | LW: 33 (+13)
21. Washington State (31.03) | 5 - 1 | LW: 21 ( - )
22. Texas Tech (31.81) | 5 - 1 | LW: 24 (+2)
23. Missouri (32.18) | 5 - 1 | LW: 26 (+3)
24. Tennessee (33.28) | 5 - 1 | LW: 25 (+1)
25. Nebraska (34.16) | 5 - 1 | LW: 22 (-3)

My ballot. Computer poll. Glad to see it’s giving props to Army, which was preseason #105. The way the algorithm is designed and the way a lot of G5 teams’ schedules are structured, it’s hard for G5 teams to get ranked (e.g. it still has Boise unranked, sitting at #35).

I’m also amused by some of the big swings over the course of the season: Wisconsin is this week’s biggest mover (+40 spots) and looking back the computer had them at 14th in Week 1, all the way down to 118th in Week 4, and now back up to 33rd.