How the grading works
Settled Games. Every game with a ballot team is a verdict on a claim, weighted by the size of the claim and by the scoreboard. Margin is the volume knob: your #3 losing to your #4 by a point barely whispers — those teams were ranked next to each other and the game went to the wire — while a four-touchdown verdict speaks at double volume. Leaving a team off the ballot is a claim too ("below my top 25"): beating a team you left off pays almost nothing, that was supposed to happen — but losing to one never softens below half strength, and an unranked team blowing out somebody's #5 is the stiffest sentence in the system. Non-playoff bowls don't testify at all — between the opt-outs and the disinterest, they're exhibitions, and a ballot shouldn't swing on whether somebody's #14 brought their starters.
Courage. The same trials, counted only where the voter's call disagreed with the poll's own call. Shadow the consensus all season and this column reads zero — which is its own verdict.
Reckoning. The final exam, in three parts: how close the last regular-season ballot landed to the final poll; how many weeks the eventual champion spent off the ballot (taking until November to rank the champ means you missed something); and the same for every eventual playoff team — except the G5 auto-bid, whose seat is structural rather than a top-25 claim.
The grade. 55% settled, 25% courage, 20% reckoning, then curved against the field — a chaos weekend that wrecks every ballot equally wrecks nobody's grade. A+ is the best gradebook in the room, C is the median voter. A voter needs eight graded weeks before a season grade means anything.
Badges are labels, not deductions. 🏠 Homer: one team ranked at least five spots above the room, for at least eight weeks — the accuracy cost is already charged by the games. 🐑 Sheep / 🃏 Maverick: the most and least consensus-hugging ballots. ⚓ Anchor: still voting the preseason poll in the stretch run. 🔮 Prophet: first to put the eventual champion at #1. Click any voter for their receipts.
Ballots via College Poll Tracker, verified to the point against AP official totals. Results via CollegeFootballData. Weeks that fail verification are quarantined, not published. A Fifth Down Sports thing.