Washington Huskies #20 in Week 4 SBNation FanPulse Poll

A dominating win over the BYU Cougars this week plus a road win for Cal in SEC country didn’t do much to change national college football fans’ opinions of the Huskies. They moved up just 1 spot in the FanPulse rankings from 21st to 20th this week. 6 teams from the Pac-12 cracked the rankings with Oregon leading the way at 13th followed by Utah, Washington, USC, Washington State, and Cal. Given that the poll comes out on Sunday mornings ET it really appears that East Coast voters don’t fully process the late night Pac-12 results which might explain Wazzu falling only 4 spots after Coug’in it at home against a winless UCLA squad late Saturday night. Utah fell 5 spots after losing at USC.

Husky fans though became much more optimistic after seeing the Dawgs obliterate what looks to be at least a decent BYU team on the road. Last week UW fans slotted the Huskies in at 19th and this week move them up all the way to 14th. On average they ended up one spot below Oregon still for the top spot in the Pac-12. Unsurprisingly, Washington fans were also more optimistic about Cal which is a combination of paying attention to them more closely and likely wishful thinking trying to improve the quality of Washington’s only loss.

Washington (+6) also unsurprisingly had the biggest difference between UW’s fans and the overall poll results. Others with a large gap included Cal (+5) and Michigan State (-4). No other program had a difference of more than one spot between the two.

Through the first several weeks there was a general built-in conference bias where conference programs were viewed more highly in the eyes of their conference opponents. That ship might have sailed now that we’re in the regular season, at least among rivalries. Washington State fans put the Huskies as #22 and still had Washington State ranked ahead of the Dawgs. Likewise, Oregon fans put the Huskies in at #21 which was below the national ranking. Utah fans (we love you guys) were much more generous about the Huskies and ranked them #15, ahead of Utah.

Things are trending back in the right direction after fans got caught up in the moment following the loss to Cal. The numbers can be a bit tricky on that graph so they are: Week 1- 100%, Week 2- 72.5%, Week 3- 90.9%, Week 4- 94.6%. If the Huskies are able to cover the spread against USC this weekend I’d expect that number to hover even closer to the 100% it started out at this season.