One Month In, We Can Finally Start Résumé-Ranking (A Post-September Top 25)

There are a lot of ways to go about ranking teams in a top-25 ballot.

There are standings, in which teams are ordered solely on win-loss record and other pre-determined statistics. This is used within conferences and in almost every other sport.

But FBS football is a different animal, since great disparity in schedule strength can leave a 12-0 team to be walloped by a 10-2 team (see Georgia - Hawaii, 1/1/2008).

Some people like to think of their ranking as a power poll, where teams are ranked based on who the author thinks would beat whom. Such a poll, by definition, disregards records in favor of a vague idea of one team being "better" by some immeasurable quality known only to the ranker. Websites like ESPN tend to do these for every sport.

Others try to predict the final poll positions of teams once the season is over. This type necessarily uses unknown future results, schedule strength, and author opinion, making it even less useful than a power poll. This is really more relevant for those trying to make predictions, especially during the preseason.

Finally, there is résumé ranking, wherein the ballotter places teams based on whom they have beaten and to whom they have lost, plus the relative strength of those wins. Résumé ranking is an attempt at using human interpretive skills to decifer the actual on-field results of teams.

Résumé rankers try to form their polls with as little bias as possible, often leading to absurd-looking polls in the early season. Notable résumé rankers include Blogpoll voters Dr. Saturday, Rakes of Mallow, and Saurian Sagacity. These pollers might get ridiculed during the first few weeks, but their ranking method is the best way to avoid common biases.

Most top 25 polls are some sort of amalgamation of the previous rankings. Unfortunately, as college football fans have seen yearly, voters in the two main polls tend to build each list based on the previous week's. This may be easier, but it puts teams that start the season lower at a disadvantage (see Auburn, 2004).

With all that said, the whole point of this article is to publish my own ballot for the Bleacher Report Top 25. As you probably figured, this ballot uses the résumé method. I'm starting the ranking only after a month of games have been played. We're finally starting to see what teams are really made of, but the first BCS poll is yet to be released.

Still, there are still plenty of question-marks across the country. This ballot is ripe for criticism, but at least every ranking has some tangible justification (which is more than I can say about most polls).

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