Check out Sam McKewon’s Associated Press Top 25 ballot for Week 6.
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Sam McKewon’s AP Top 25
1. Ohio State (Last week: 1) Excellent road win at a Washington team that has an explosive offense — which the Buckeyes held in check — and hadn’t lost a conference game at home in years. To keep Oregon out of No. 1, I had to watch and assess the quality of OSU’s play. In short? Strong.
2. Oregon (2): Beat Penn State 30-24 in overtime. The Ducks didn’t win by fluke; they played better for three quarters, got tired in the fourth, and ultimately finished the game with a touchdown pass and an interception in a hostile atmosphere. Quarterback Dante Moore was very good.
3. Miami (3): Bye week. Rival FSU next week.
4. Ole Miss (9): Makes a big move based on beating LSU at home, Georgia, Penn State and LSU (obviously) losing in front of the Rebels, and Oklahoma dropping due to an injury to starting quarterback John Mateer.
5. Indiana (12): Another big jump for the Hoosiers, whose win over Illinois looks even better after the Illini’s win over USC and whose win at Iowa, one of the nation’s tougher teams at home, stands out.
6. Oklahoma (5): Drops due to the injury to Mateer, who may not return until Oct. 11, at the earliest.
7 Texas Tech (8): Inches up based on Penn State dropping. The Red Raiders’ win over Utah still looks excellent.
8. Texas A&M (13): Moves back up into my top 10 with a good defensive win over Auburn and the value of the win at Notre Dame rising slightly.
9. Penn State (6): The Nittany Lions acquitted themselves fairly well — I expected Oregon to win — but don’t have the quality wins teams above them do.
10. Texas (10): Stayed put despite all the movement around the Longhorns.
11. Tennessee (16): We’re going to run through the next four teams all at once, because they’re closely bunched together with similar resumes. UT gets the nod as the highest-rated team of those four because it has two power conference wins (so does Alabama), one of those is on the road (ditto Alabama) and, in Tennessee’s loss, it controlled the majority of the game against Georgia before missing a field goal at the end of regulation.
Florida State comes next because it had the most dominant win (over Alabama) and lost, in overtime, in a difficult road environment of a team I have ranked 26th this week.
Alabama is next, having beaten Georgia (and having controlled the game start to finish, with UGA at 14. You could reverse the order and make the argument for that, too. Here’s where I landed.
12. Florida State (11): See above.
13. Alabama (25): See above.
14. Georgia (4): See above.
15 LSU (7): Lost at Ole Miss. One could argue harder for the Tigers’ resume, but their offensive output isn’t there.
16. Missouri (17): Keeps winning, this time over UMass. The Tigers don’t play on the road until Oct. 18 at Auburn.
17. Georgia Tech (18): Moves up after the win over Wake Forest.
18. Iowa State (19): Inches up after the win over Arizona.
19. Michigan (20): Moves up during its bye week.
20. Utah (21): Moves up after a blowout win at West Virginia.
21. Vanderbilt (22): Beat Utah State in a shootout. Alabama next week.
22. Mississippi State (24): Moves up, despite losing, because of a strong performance against ranked Tennessee and the improved value of beating Arizona State, which reenters my poll.
23. Arizona State (unranked): Back-to-back strong wins over Baylor and TCU, plus a good loss at Mississippi State, return the Sun Devils to the ratings.
24. Illinois (unranked): Defeated USC 34-32 and, moreover, controlled 95% of the game with its rush attack. A questionable call late in the first half was credited as a fumble against the Illini when it easily could have been ruled down.
25. USC (15): Takes a tumble with the loss to Illinois — the Trojans’ defense, in particular, didn’t get much done — and the lack of change in the value of USC’s wins over power conference team.
Dropped out:
Auburn: Lost at Texas A&M. Decent loss, much like the loss at Oklahoma, but the Tigers’ offensive performance, at this point, leaves a lot to be desired.
TCU: Lost to Arizona State. The win over North Carolina has diminished in value despite the quality of it.
Sam’s voting method:
Game performance/control/dominance: Close games are a reality of the sport, particularly against evenly-matched programs, but dominance is something to watch. When you win, how do you win, by how much, and in what fashion?
I look at a variety of factors here, including explosive plays, run yardage differential, yards per point differential, turnover margin and nonoffensive touchdowns on defense and special teams, since those plays are strong indicators of overall strength and winning.
Who you beat (or, in theory, lose to), where you play them: Generally — though not always — beating power conference teams is better than beating non-power conference teams, and winning on the road, particularly at all SEC, most Big Ten and select ACC and Big 12 venues, is better, too.
Scheduling matters to some degree outside of conference play. Inside of conference play, scheduling matters, too — clearly, Wisconsin’s schedule is harder than Nebraska’s — but it’s far better for NU to dominate its schedule vs. UW simply playing its schedule without success.
Also, winning back-to-back road games can be a real feat. Hard for any team to accomplish with frequency. (Indeed, not every team experiences the phenomenon within a season.)
Eye test: It’s not possible to watch every game to its entirety. Just isn’t. But where possible, watching games are helpful — especially early in the season — and you’re looking for evidence of physical dominance, athleticism and timely playmaking.
Reactivity to results: The Associated Press asks for us to base our votes on results, not preconceived notions of what we think could happen. It’s OK if teams move up and down the polls with some frequency.
Remember: The gap between, say, the No. 15 team and the No. 24 team may be very small. Especially in an era of greater parity and super conferences. So I don’t follow the idea that, once a team is ranked, it can’t change its poll position unless other teams, ranked higher, lose. Good performances rate in my eyes as much as bad performances.