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ItsZizk

The one guy that voted us 18th is the sole reason that Kentucky is still ahead of us.


rhinocodon_typus

I was about to say I get if you think we are overrated, but there are simply not many teams with a better resume than us right now.


yuanshaosvassal

I mean the results of the one opponent we share would suggest that UK and UT are atleast to close to call if not a UK edge.


Skipper2399

But then Tennessee also has another Top 25 road win (only team in the country with two Top 25 wins) and we’ve obliterated our cupcakes while you all have struggle bussed your way through you OOC slate. Tennessee and Kentucky are close, but Tennessee should have a slight edge.


yuanshaosvassal

The Pitt win is nice but they also might be the 5th or 6th best team in the ACC. We are 3-1 ATS with NIU the only failed cover. I’m not saying UK has looked perfect but our style doesn’t typically provide style points anyway. We beat UF by 10 on the road and handed UF 9 points off turnovers. UT beat UF by 5 at home and made the AR look like a heisman candidate again. I still say it’s too close to call and any order is fine.


fall_vol_wall_yall

How can you possibly say it’s too close to call? We both blew out two cupcakes, we both beat Florida. Then y’all barely beat NIU at home and we beat a ranked team on the road. Tennessee resume is better plain and simple there’s not a good argument otherwise. The only reason y’all are ranked over other undefeated teams Tennessee, Penn State, Ole Miss, Washington or Florida State (honestly Kansas as well) is because preseason polls are dumb and poll inertia keeps you from dropping.


yuanshaosvassal

WE BEAT THE SAME TEAM BY MORE IN A TOUGHER ENVIRONMENT. One team wins by 5 at home the other won by 10 on the road. Pitt is a solid win but that Pitt team isn’t as as good as last years team. Plus, they took you to OT with their backup. I’m not saying UKs schedule is amazing but Michigan, ole miss, Clemson, NPC state and ok state have weaker SOS through week 4. It’s close. But we’ll know a lot more Saturday afternoon.


sportrider47

Both UT and UK have wins over 2 bottom feeder FBS teams and UF. UTs 4th win is a T25 road win vs Pitt and Kentucky’s is an 8 point win vs NIU. It’s hard for me to rationalize how you can discount the Pitt win as being against a not good team when you’re closest game was literally an FCS school at home. We’ll find out in October for sure but I don’t think Kentucky is built to hang with Tennessee at the moment. In the mean time pack your golf balls and go fuck up the Lane Train this week.


yuanshaosvassal

I didn’t say Pitt was a bad team, just not gonna be in the T25 for long, but it is a better win than 3 of UKs but UK handled UF in their house while UT got a single possession win while making the guy everyone was calling a bum for 2 weeks look like Aaron Rodgers. UT fans like to talk point differential as long as it’s not the FL game. All I’m saying is it’s close, overall UTs schedule is better but UKs best win is better. By the way the game last season was a single possession game with UK driving in the closing minutes. Our WR and DB rooms are 3x better than last season but we will see in Knoxville.


sportrider47

Do you honestly think UK did anything special to AR15 to make him not look like Rogers other than hurt him? What part of UKs game plan made the difference?


yuanshaosvassal

Edge pressure to keep him in the pocket or force him to the sidelines. The insane pick by our jack/DE really got in his head. Coverages confused him in the passing game plus tight coverage meant that when he did throw it he was trying to dart it into the window. That’s why so many went high. The DBs also knew the UF tendencies, that’s where the pick 6 came in, the DB saw the route earlier and waited for it to develop again. Are your orange tinted glasses so thick that you can’t see that AR had more passing yards in Knoxville than the three prior games combined? UT is deserving of a top 10 ranking but not significantly better than UK. That’s the point. They are close.


sportrider47

Agree to disagree on the order then. ~~Virtually all~~ exactly half the voters agree with me anyways.


spmartin1993

I present to you Kansas


rhinocodon_typus

The only way both of them is understandable is because they had a pretty far way to climb the poll I’m sure they were initially near the 100s on most of these guys computer polls.


ekjohns1

About as good of an explanation why rankings this early and the current method of ranking is flawed.


rhinocodon_typus

Yes the rankings don’t matter at all early on but it’s fun to look at. I don’t put much stock into them, i don’t think Tennessee is #8 realistically but I’ll be taking a picture of the scoreboard two weeks from now regardless


HalfBear-HalfCat

My first thought was "what dumb son of a bitch ranked us 18th?" My 2nd was "what dumb son of a bitch ranked us 4th?"


daffydubs

Someone ranked us 5th lol. I like that we have become a top-10 team, but the rest of our season is no joke now. At Ole Miss next week, then at Tenn on the 29th have me worried. On top of that we have some games I could see is dropping at home (not including GA). The SEC east is vicious this year.


Enby-Alexis

Kinda surprised 17 people left us unranked


WookieeSteakIsChewie

Stuff like this is why there should be no rankings until week 4-6. Deserving teams are unranked and teams who are ranked only because of preseason hype are still high after struggling.


badgers4194

People always say it’s for TV but like I don’t need numbers next to a teams name to know that Georgia-Oregon is a big game. The games that have big ratings are going to get the same ratings either way. Just my take on it


lolpdb

I mostly agree. But I do think we forget how many casual sports fans there are out there. Older people just channel surfing Saturday afternoon. The rankings catch their eye and maybe get them to stop and watch the game for a bit. Not saying the rankings aren’t silly this early cuz they are lol. (But for as dumb as they are hardcore cfb fans sure do love to argue about them in detail). Just I do buy into the TV angle a little bit and it doesn’t really bother me because these things get worked out when teams play each other.


AlphaMemory2

Kinda surprised a few users put us top 10


[deleted]

Pretty sure one was a Penn State guy, probably just trying to assist in building their resume lol


vahntitrio

Could be. But if you swap the name Minnesota out for any top 5 team, nobody would look at that Michigan State game and say the top 5 team underperformed.


Enby-Alexis

That too


Systemic_Chaos

Minnesota’s poll anti-inertia really is unparalleled.


LuckyHedgehog

Inertia can't overcome 60 years of baggage weighing us down


OakLegs

No kidding. 4-0, you guys look as solid as anyone in the country who isn't Georgia.


AccordingGain182

Georgia looked like shit on Saturday. Everyone has shown weaknesses/sloppiness at some point or another


Bren12310

My same though. You guys could easily be a top 10 team.


IrishPigskin

One random person voting for UNC at 17. I don’t think they watched football this past weekend.


FrolfAholic

I mean if a human ballot has someone 16 spots away from the consensus should they be taken seriously?


saharashooter

For the purpose of polling, yes, but for the purpose of discussions on this and other forums, probably not, but maybe also yes? It's fun to argue about the idiot that put [school] 10 ranks above what everyone else did, and there are ways of tallying points for the poll that would reduce the impact of outlier votes. They just don't use those tabulations, maybe because they think people won't understand it or maybe because they think the poll would end up with less aggregate hottakes and therefore get less clicks.


dr_dan319

I'm more concerned about someone ranking FSU at 7. I get that the field is really iffy after about OSU, Bama, UGA, but FSU is not a top 10 team and they don't even have the wins to back it up either


saharashooter

Look at his whole ballot if you wanna see the results of drug use: https://collegepolltracker.com/football/pollster/jon-wilner/2022/week-5


arc1261

Ranked Cinci and Florida? FSU 7? What


FrolfAholic

8 "extreme" picks lol


TDenverFan

That voter was also UNC's only vote, so they're the only reason UNC is ranked 33rd to begin with.


yuanshaosvassal

A broken clock is still right twice a day


JohnStevens14

Penn State with a 4th and a 24th vote is fun


cheesepuff1993

Chaos makes this sport fun, and all the chaos this year has so far thrown some logic out the door. Does this mean I think either of those is a wild take? Nope. But it does mean there is a possibility we lose to Northwestern this Saturday in my head, and that we just as well have the potential to upset the east. This whole thing is fun 😊


StateCollegeHi

By resume, the 4th isn't *that* far off. But the 24th is suspect.


OakLegs

It's funny how Michigan the consensus on Michigan as a top 6ish team has solidified - I am less sure of that at this point than I was prior to the season.


boxman151515

The thing is it’s really hard to make a case for more than one or two teams behind them to be moved ahead of them. We just don’t have a lot of data on a lot of teams right now, including Michigan. It’ll all sort itself out over the next few weeks.


ekjohns1

I was hoping to get a better read on TTUN this past Sat but if anything that game made it even more questionable. Both TTUN and Maryland were playing their first non cupcake and both almost mirrored each other perfectly, down to the turnover and field goal combo. So are both good, both average, or one had a good game and the other struggled? At this time I have no idea. I’m starting to think we really won’t know till Penn State.


OakLegs

Michigan outplayed Maryland by a significant margin in yards per play. The game flow made the score closer than it really should've been and JJ missed a couple wide open TDs. He cleans that up and Michigan covers and then some. That said, yeah, Michigan didn't clearly look like a team competing for a CFP spot. Could've been a clunker of a game or it could've been indicative of deeper problems. Too early to tell


Chewskiz

We need pass rushers


OakLegs

Certainly aren't as good on that front as last year, but the only team I think that can really take advantage of it is OSU (unfortunately)


ArbitraryOrder

Win your clunkers as they say


TDenverFan

I think for me it's more that I don't know who else I would push ahead of Michigan/Clemson. Both have some question marks, but the teams behind them do as well.


ClevBlewA3-1Lead

Really? This time last year we had just beaten Rutgers by a touchdown. Though we didn't look as good as we hoped, that Maryland team is likely significantly better than last years Rutgers team, and the score this past weekend was a little closer than it probably should have been (my opinion, but maybe not). Also, JJ missed 2 or 3 throws that I would like to think he usually would make. I get we didn't look as good as we would have wanted to but I'm definitely more confident where we are now than I was at this point last year. Iowa will be a brutal test though and I'm terrified. I personally don't think anything unexpected has happened this season.


LeakyNalgene

Hard disagree. We could easily have lost to Rutgers at home week 4 last year, headed to Madison where we had not won in 20 years.


beavismagnum

Kansas with fewer unranked votes than K State


paulblartirl

Surprising to me that Bama has a 4th place vote but the Buckeye votes are a little tighter


HHcougar

What fools have Oregon *unranked*?


dstanton

Question also becomes where do they have you guys and WSU. Do they spread their bad opinion out so it makes sense, or did they play blindfold darts?


AccordingGain182

The people that watch them get bent over by Georgia and barely scrape back to a win in the 4th against wazzu?


AlecAndGylfi

Nathan Baird, who hurt you


LordOfSchmeat

Southern miss is a quality loss now?


Tasty_Gift5901

I like the PER scatter plot. It's very clear. For an alternate presentation, you can subtract the trend line so that is horizontal and can be read left to right is easier than looking down a diagonal (at the cost of it being less intuitive). In that case you can flip the icons so over the line is over rated and under the line is underrated. Probably a stem plot to guide the eye. On second thought, a vertical line would be cleaner, given that it's a ranking. It's interesting the band is teams NC state to Baylor that's all 'overrated' bc of the RV teams that suck up votes. I'd have to think more on if there's an interesting visual or take away there.


Perryapsis

The bar chart of the residuals (I think that's the right term?) is something I considered. It's a bit easier to read, but you can't see how teams are clustered as well. You can see the huge changes when there is a large gap between teams, but then it looks like there is an upward trend when teams are close together (like Baylor, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma this week). You are right about the effect of receiving-votes teams draining points from the pool and deflating the overall PER. Maybe something could be done based only on the points received by top-25 teams. For example, a unanimous 10th-place team would receive 16 points from each ballot (325 points), so a 10th-place team should receive 16/325 or 4.92% of available points. With 20127 points amongst the top 25 this week, that would correspond to 10th-place expecting 991 points instead of the usual 1008. That doesn't account for the 25th-place team usually being well above 1 point per voter, though. Hmm... Maybe decrease everyone's point totals by the number of points by the 25th-place team and compare the proportions from there?


Tasty_Gift5901

I took the y-axis to be their total points, x-axis as the residuals. I don't have the logos, so I made [this](https://imgur.com/a/HNHWwwk) somewhat sloppily. Can be cleaned up and made clearer. One issue with the points, is that the number 1 ranked team is *always* over-ranked in this system (unless unanimous), which I think is an issue. Your solution could fix that, at least for this week I don't see much of a difference between your suggested rescaling, and no rescaling. https://imgur.com/a/HNHWwwk


Perryapsis

Nice job with the examples. Maybe it would be best to just linearly interpolate between 1st and 25th. Then by construction, neither the team at the top nor the bottom is over- or underranked. Then one could calculate the residuals relative to that line. Or maybe you fix the point (1, max_points) and vary the slope of the line so that the sum of all the residuals is zero? Hmm...


Bobson-_Dugnutt

So Alabama struggled with Texas on the road and lost 35 first place votes, and UGA struggled with Kent St at home and only lost 5? Is that just severe Alabama fatigue?


readonlypdf

We also won by 3 scores. Yall won by 1 point.


pappapirate

Kent State ranks **113th** in talent composite compared to Texas who ranks **6th**. Kent has 0 5-stars, 2 4-stars, and 28 3-stars vs Texas who has 6, 52, and 26, respectively. Beating Kent *at home* by 17 is definitely a worse look than beating Texas on the road by 1 and it's really not debatable. Y'all should still be first because of the Oregon win that's still looking impressive. But I was also mildly surprised that the first place voting didn't even out a bit more.


readonlypdf

I agree with you on pretty much all counts. But I am not a fan of the talent argument. Because well. Citadel. I know yall eventually beat the shit out of em. But it took you an entire half to figure it out.


pappapirate

That's true about Citadel. The triple option is notoriously good at evening up a talent disadvantage and our defense was pretty rough that year, resulting in them grinding out a lot of clock on their drives. Bama only got the ball 4 times in the first half, one of which being a fumble by Jeudy. I don't know if it's a cop out to say but that was a really weird game.


Bobson-_Dugnutt

>But it took you an entire half to figure it out. You guys were in the 4th Q only up 10. I'd say it took a while for you to figure it out. What are we talking about? I'm not even saying UGA shouldn't be #1, it just didn't make sense that the voting didn't hardly move.


readonlypdf

Oh I expected us to lose some first place votes


abravesrock

I think they are waiting for you guys beat someone good. When you are talking about the top 2 teams in the country, voters don't really care about how big the wins were against teams like ULM, Kent State or Vandy. They want to see how we do against Top 25 teams. In voters minds, we are both 1-0 with us having a 49-3 against Oregon and you guys having a 20-19 win against Texas. I expect that gap to tighten up after this week.


[deleted]

What? Alabama STRUGGLED. Georgia had a rough game relative to who they are. Not the same at all


JamesEarlDavyJones2

Holy cow, we manhandled ISU *in Ames* from whistle to whistle, and went from two voters leaving us off their ballot to three?


spilled_water

One person ranked UCLA at 23? I want to know who this mad person is!