[FarmBoy]

My understanding of JW's methodology is that the first ballot, pre-season, is based on where he thinks they will end up. Then the games begin and he tries to be results based. For the first couple of weeks, as he notes, the data sample is very poor, so he partially weights his rankings on where he thinks they'll end up and what they have shown to date. In the case of UFDFG, I think he's saying that he views them as a quality team, so Texas beating them proves their worth, however, he doesn't yet prove that UFDFG is not quality, perhaps in part because they were playing on the road. If Texas is a top 10 team, losing in 2OT to them on the road would theoretically mean your team is just as good as them.

It's fun to criticize his methods/outcomes, but I don't see a pollster doing anything better with transparency or any real better methodology to do a week 1 ranking. Every team with a winning record has done it against teams who haven't won a single game yet!

[FarmBoy]

My understanding of JW's methodology is that the first ballot, pre-season, is based on where he thinks they will end up. Then the games begin and he tries to be results based. For the first couple of weeks, as he notes, the data sample is very poor, so he partially weights his rankings on where he thinks they'll end up and what they have shown to date. In the case of UFDFG, I think he's saying that he views them as a quality team, so Texas beating them proves their worth, however, he doesn't yet prove that UFDFG is not quality, perhaps in part because they were playing on the road. If Texas is a top 10 team, losing in 2OT to them on the road would theoretically mean your team is just as good as them.

It's fun to criticize his methods/outcomes, but I don't see a pollster doing anything better with transparency or any real better methodology to do a week 1 ranking. Every team with a winning record has done it against teams who haven't won a single game yet!