Welcome back to the Corner Poll, where the rankings are made up and the criteria remain intentionally vague.
If you’re new here, the idea is pretty simple. The Corner Poll ranks teams based on how I feel about them right now. Emphasis on the right now. Results obviously influence that, but this isn’t supposed to determine who would win on a neutral field. Expectations can change how I view a team just as easily as what happened on Saturday or Sunday, and sometimes the general feeling surrounding a team is enough to move it around.
In short, there isn’t a formula. That’s very intentional.
We’ve entered the point of the seasons where the rankings are beginning to have some actual evidence behind them. College football has already given us several reasons to completely rethink what we believed in August. The NFL finally played games that count, which was a welcome change of pace. Over in England, five Premier League Matchweeks have produced more interesting results than we all could’ve imagined.
We’re also keeping things a little simpler here. The point of the Corner Poll was never to produce a 4,000-word legal defense of why Iowa is ranked ahead of Mississippi State. I’ll explain the moves that deserve some attention and let the tiers do more of the work everywhere else.
Let’s rank some football teams.
