Place Team Points #1 Votes Movement Noisy 1 Georgia 191 6 - Georgia 2 Michigan 189 0 - Michigan 3 Texas 180 1 +6 Ohio State 4 Florida State 177 0 +1 Texas 5 Ohio State 163 0 -2 Florida State 6 Penn State 148 0 - Penn State 7 Washington 139 0 +1 Washington 8 USC 138 1 +4 USC 9 Notre Dame 135 0 +4 Notre Dame 10 Alabama 121 0 -6 Alabama 11 Tennessee 121 0 -4 Tennessee 12 Utah 116 0 -2 Utah 13 Oregon 108 0 -2 Oregon 14 Ole Miss 80 0 +4 Kansas State 15 Oklahoma 77 0 +1 Ole Miss 16 Kansas State 72 0 +1 Oklahoma 17 LSU 65 0 -3 LSU 18 North Carolina 63 0 -3 North Carolina 19 Oregon State 50 0 +2 Oregon State 20 Miami (FL) 43 0 NR Miami (FL) 21 Colorado 38 0 +2 Colorado 22 Duke 37 0 - Duke 23 Washington State 21 0 NR Louisville 24 Arkansas 17 0 NR Troy 25 Iowa 17 0 NR Baylor
Others receiving votes: Wisconsin (15), Texas A&M (14), UCLA (14), Auburn (10), Louisville (10), Wake Forest (10), Kentucky (8), Kansas (5), Rutgers (4), Clemson (3), Tulane (1)
Link to check out the spreadsheet of responses here
I’m okay with ties (but I’m also a weirdo who thinks games should be able to tie and is okay with split national champions). IIRC, r/cfb had the occasional tie and split the #10 spot in half – but they had tons of voters so that was rare. I think if we get to, say, 20ish regular voters then I would suggest allowing them.
Kind of bummed we already seem to have gotten a throwaway ballot, and surprised it wouldn’t have messed up the poll too much given our small sample size (although it would have made a mess of “others receiving votes”). If they really wanted to manipulate the poll, they could have been more crafty about it and then we would have had to keep it. I think you made the right call here, but we should probably set up some guidelines for throwing out ballots. I don’t know if it would be too much work, but if they are missing more than, say, 5 teams on the otherwise final rankings then I would say it should be thrown out. The criteria could be looser than that if only a few games were played (and in the preseason I like it being a free-for-all).