Your Week 3 poll makes absolutely no sense. Typical early-season variation is one thing, but this is ridiculous. FSU and Cincy go from unranked to 2nd and 3rd, respectively? Texas and Florida each fall 10 spots after 10 point victories over conference opponents (both of whom were ranked in your poll just a few weeks prior)??

Please explain your logic.

I love the type of thinking in cdavis627's poll! I do something similar with my poll, but generally maintain a team's ranking if they post a solid result, even if it is against weak competition. I never understood why so many pollsters (here and in the AP/Coaches polls) seem to think that a team should move no more than X number of spots from the previous week, especially in the early part of the season. I challenge anyone to find an FBS team that has posted a resume to date that is better than Miami or Cincy.

FSU at #2 is a little odd, but at least they are behind the team they (barely) lost to. That is far more logical to me than putting Oklahoma State above Houston, which nobody seems to have a problem with.

If something like this appeared near the end of the season, I'd have more of a problem with it because by then we all have a very good idea of how good each team's performance has been. But at this point, we still need a few more weeks before we can really be sure who the good teams are and who the pretenders are. His poll is clearly based on what has actually happened on the field so far and not on guesses about how good a team is or predictions about how they will perform in the future, which is something I think more pollsters should do!

I don't have a huge issue with the top of the poll... Miami looks solid. FSU and Cincy too... good resumes so far, etc.

But my questions/concerns:
Oregon (week 2 #14) beats Utah (week 2 #16) and falls to #24
Oregon State (unranked) loses and moves into top 25
Arizona (unranked) loses and moves into top 25

UCLA beats Tennessee and moves into poll. Florida beats Tennessee and falls 10 spots.

I have the same issues as ScottishDuck. Major variations are fine, but after a solid win against a good team, I don't see how a team can drop so much. A struggle against a bad team? Absolutely. A solid win against a bad team? It can at least be argued fairly successfully. But 10 point wins against Tennessee and Texas Tech(Florida and Texas) and a 7 point win against Utah(Oregon)? That makes no sense to me.

I have absolutely no problem with Cincy and Miami at the top(or FSU, really, since they easily could have beaten Miami). I just about put Cincy in the top 5 this week because no team has impressed me as consistently as they have. If the Big East turns out to be week enough, they just may be a threat to get to the title game. They're playing that good right now. I wanted to see Miami prove something more than beating FSU in a game where neither team played defense. Beating Georgia Tech the way they did and the subsequent beating FSU put on BYU did it for me. I jumped them from unranked(and not really close) to 15th and wasn't sure if that was high enough.

A lot of the variation I have is because I don't use my poll from the previous week as a guide for my current poll. Therefore, some very wild variations will happen in my poll, especially in the first few weeks of the season. Some of these drops are simply chalked up to that. My rankings are solely done by what the teams have done up to that point, not how they are expected to finish.

I did, however, intentionally drop Texas and Florida because I was not impressed with their close wins at home. If they wind up at 8-0 and going forward, they will be at the top of my poll at that point. Right now, I feel like there are many teams with stronger resumes at this point.

Good enough for me. Thanks for the quick answer.

I've started doing that this year also, I think it's good because you can evaluate teams week-by-week without feeling like you should rank them relative to where they were the weak before. I think penalizing Florida and Texas for wins against conference opponents (albeit not especially impressive) is a little harsh though.

Personally I think you should go by your previous polls at least to a degree...otherwise one can argue that you aren't using consistent logic...either way, this early in the season I'm indifferent to these swings and stuff...

I would like to thank cdavis627. I was concerned that my poll this week might look inconsistent, but mine looks pretty stable compared to yours.

Last year, there was a healthy debate regarding whether to use "automated" results to produce a poll. I have an automated poll and a human poll, but have not been convinced to use the automated poll directly in this forum. I find that the automated poll does not have enough data to be accurate early in the season. I do use the automated poll to identify errors in my human poll, and to provide direction for future human polls.

I sense an automated presence in the cdavis627 poll. Interestingly, Miami is #1 in my automated poll, while Texas is #23 and Florida is #36.

I'm beginning to understand why there is some question about the validity of this poll, if voters can't do a better job than this particular voter has done. Sure, there is "variation", in any poll. But he's all over the map! You don't have to look any further than the teams he has listed as "dropped out" to understand why. Zero, I think is how I'd describe the level of consistency to your poll.

There is a form of automated presence in my polling, being that I try to take Strength of Schedule into account. After a few weeks, it becomes impossible to compare schedules without using some form of computer ranking in order to compare schedules.

As for the variations in my poll, it will tend to vary less at the end of the year, when the game played that week is the 10th or 11th game on the resume as opposed to the the 2nd or 3rd. Naturally the fluctuations will diminish all the teams resumes have become complete.

Upon further review, I noticed that cdavis627's poll for week 3 is identical to Sagarin's poll for the week: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt09.htm. You said "There is a form of automated presence in my polling", but it seems to me like it is completely automated, at least for this week.

I suppose it comes down to a fundamental difference in polling philosophies. I use a combination of resume and gut instinct in my poll (as can be seen in the fact that I have Miami, FSU and Houston ranked higher than a lot of other pollsters), while others feel it is okay to simply copy whatever the computer spits out. I know this is a discussion that has occured several times before on this site, I just feel a need to call it out when I see such wild, outlying polls such as this one.

Upon further further review, his poll for week 2 was identical to the week 2 Sagarin Ratings as well. I have them in an excel spreadsheet from my conference realignment idea I posted last week.

So, cdavis627, are you Jeff Sagarin? If not, do you use the same formula as Jeff Sagarin?

Maybe Sagarin gets his poll from cdavis... unlikely though.

Should copying rankings be allowed? It is a valid system (its used in the BCS Rankings!). What if we had 1000 people sign up that wanted to copy the same system? Shouldn't their opinion that that system is ideal be valid?

I'm on the fence. I'd really like community input on this.

I'm not saying that anyone copied. He could have a very nearly identical rating system as sagarin.

Also, I've thought for the beginning of this season and the end of last season quite a few times about this scenario: what would happen if someone (me in my previous examples) just copied sagarins ratings? I look at them every week when I'm compiling mine (mainly because I use his SOS in my calculation). I trust most of sagarin's ratings. I always see something that I don't agree with, but overall, my opinion is that sagarin's ratings are very valid and based on a myriad of variables.

However, here is my issue in this particular case:


Had the answer simply been "I feel very strongly that Jeff Sagarin's computer ratings are the most accurate reflection of how the teams should be ranked. As such, I just copy his top 25" I would be 100% in approval of his position. But since his answer was "My rankings are solely done by what the teams have done up to that point, not how they are expected to finish. I did, however, intentionally drop Texas and Florida because I was not impressed with their close wins at home" I am uneasy.

Unless of course cdavis627 IS Jeff Sagarin, this is blatant plagiarism... Even if he comes out now and says that he copies Sagarin's Ratings, I may be okay with it... but trying to defend it as his poll.. doesn't look to good... unless of course he is JS.

Also, even if he did have the same formulas as JS, it would be nearly impossible to happen to get the same teams "based on this year alone." The Sagarin Ratings for the first few weeks (I think) have SOME ties to previous polls until there is enough information to make the rating independent.

Therefore it is NOT based on on-field performance alone yet and cdavis627's understanding of the ratings as "rankings are solely done by what the teams have done up to that point, not how they are expected to finish" is wrong... therefore, I posit that cdavis627 is NOT Jeff Sagarin and should have cited his source and would have avoided much of this animosity.

Perhaps it is all coincidental...