No change at the top. But it’s closer.
Rank Team Votes (Top pick) 1 Alabama 29 (16) 2 Florida State 29 (12) 3 Stanford 29 (0) 3 Oregon 29 (0) 5 Missouri 28 6 Baylor 27 7 Ohio State 27 8 Auburn 23 8 Clemson 23 10 Michigan State 10 11 Oklahoma State 8 12 Texas A&M 7 12 South Carolina 7 14 Wisconsin 5 15 Fresno State 3 16 Arizona State 2 17 LSU 1 17 UCLA 1 17 Georgia 1 17 Northern Illinois 1
COMMENTS:
- We like Michigan State a lot more than the pollsters do.
- We like Ohio State a lot less than the pollsters do.
- Conference breakdown: SEC – 7; Pac-12 – 4; Big Ten – 3; ACC – 2; Big 12 – 2; MAC – 1; MWC – 1
That’s because Michigan State is better than Ohio State.
Neither of them should be in the top ten. They’ve had middling performances against awful schedules. ND is the best team either has played – and ND won.
UGA? Really?
Considering this is a predominantly UGA site, I am pretty impressed that less than 4% of the voters, one, voted UGA as a Top 10. Shows how solid the majority of folks here are, despite the passion involved with CFB. There are a lot of questionable votes for Top 10 on that list can could be challenged, imo, why would you choose that one for the bigger surprise?
I voted UGA in the top ten. The reason is that UGA, with Gurley playing, is easily a top ten team. Gurley is playing now.
I also put a lot more emphasis on strength of schedule. For example, LSU lost no ground in my book because they lost to Alabama. My thought is a team should not move down because they lost to a higher ranked team unless they look so badly in losing that it appears they were overrated – ala Miami v. FSU. Additionally, if a team plays tough competition and has some wins and losses, they should be ranked ahead of a team that is undefeated but would likely have fared worse against the same schedule. I think difficult schedules should be rewarded comparative to weak schedules. In case of doubt, I go with the team with the more difficult schedule.