STATS Poll Guesses (Oct 21)

Was kind of bummed a week ago, so I didn’t do this. But we just had another crazy weekend, with eight ranked teams losing … so here we go.

Guess, Team (Record), [Current Rank]
#1 NDSU (7-0) [1]
#2 Kennesaw State (6-1) [3]
#3 James Madison (5-2) [4]
#4 Weber State (5-2) [7]
#5 Eastern Washington (5-2) [9]
#6 SDSU (4-2) [2]
#7 UC Davis (6-1) [10]
#8 Elon (5-2) [11]
#9 Wofford (5-2) [12]
#10 Illinois State (5-2) [8]
#11 Jacksonville St (5-2) [5]
#12 Towson (6-1) [13]
#13 McNeese (5-2) [6]
#14 C. Arkansas (5-2) [15]
#15 Colgate (6-0) [17]
#16 Stony Brook (6-2) [18]
#17 NC A&T (3-3) [19]
#18 Nicholls (4-3) [20]
#19 Princeton (6-0) [23]
#20 SHSU (4-3) [14]
#21 Maine (4-3) [16]
#22 Delaware (5-2) [24]
#23 Northern Iowa (4-3) [25]
#24 North Dakota (5-2) [NR]
#25 Dartmouth (6-0) [NR]

NR Rhode Island (4-3) [22]
NR ETSU (6-2) [21]

Since South Dakota State lost to ranked Northern Iowa, and the pollsters seem to love UNI, I don’t expect SDSU to drop a whole lot. Same goes for Illinois State, which managed to not get blown out at NDSU.

But with all due respect to unranked SEMO, Jacksonville State’s loss (by over 3 TDs) to Southeast Missouri State could be a killer. Same goes for McNeese, which got drubbed (45-17) at Incarnate Word. Likewise for Sam Houston State, which lost decisively (41-23) at unranked Lamar. In fact, it would not surprise me to see any or all of them drop a couple more spots.

Everything else was pretty “standard,” including the likelihood that ETSU and Rhode Island would drop off the bottom. That allowed the next two top vote getters in the last poll to move up.

Some further observations: Having eight ranked team lose yesterday was extra interesting because five ranked teams had byes. So 8 of the 20 who played … lost. The week before, when we also had 8 ranked teams lose, all but one ranked teams played, so that was 8 of 24.

That got me to wondering just how such a “bloodbath” impacted the rankings over that two-week span. And it turns out … Not all that much. (Assuming my guesses are reasonably close.) Despite all those losses by ranked teams, only four that were ranked on October 8 are likely to be out of the top-25 in the next poll.

That is, these will be some moving around, but the list will not be that different. Example: Wofford dropped a lot with its loss a week ago, but will most likely bounce back. Also, Maine moved up with a nice win, but will likely drop back to where it was on October 9.

All and all, should be very interesting tomorrow. (And a note FWIW: My top-25 projection includes five teams with 3 losses.)