Quote Originally Posted by WileECoyote06 View Post
It's not slot voting. Also, we disagree on whether this is early. As of next week, many teams will have completed half of their schedule.

Despite Holy Cross being in my top-15; they may never get back to the top ten regardless of teams losing in front of them. Harvard may flame out the rest of the season and then it turns into a bad loss. Right now, it's a toss-up.

I'm not sure where i will rank Harvard. They may still be behind Holy Cross. Just like NDSU may still be ahead of South Dakota in my poll.

Interestingly enough, you know who may be around USD? Harvard. . . why? Because they've got a common opponent and similar results (32 point win/24 point win). And that's just one factor of many that goes into my evaluation of teams.
It is still early enough to make a big move, especially if a team does not have a key win and the meat of their schedule is later.

You said you are not slotting teams but if you keep USD behind NDSU and Harvard behind HC then that is EXACTLY what you are doing. There is no argument to have HC ahead of Harvard if you watched that game. Harvard was the superior team. HC is lucky Harvard did not try to score again. If could have been a 17 point game.

You just admitted that Harvard and Holy Cross could flame out and if they had a strong resume you would be confident they won't flame out. I try to avoid pushing teams too early who don't have quality wins, especially from bottom 5 leagues in FCS (Ivy, Patriot, MEAC, NEC, Pioneer).

I am evaluating based on the speed of the teams and how good teams are rather than just going by points. The transitive property is what you are talking about and I would only consider that with multiple common opponents. 1 game can be an outlier.