Pate has one problem with the preseason AP poll, and it's not really about where Indiana landed. It's about how Indiana landed there.

The Hoosiers sit at No. 6. Nothing shocking on its face — plenty of national champs open outside the top spot the following year, and Pate says he's never been a believer that last year's ending has to dictate this year's preseason number one. But then he found the number that broke his brain a little: Indiana pulled the third-most first-place votes of any team in the country. Not sixth-most. Third. Behind only Ohio State and Oregon, ahead of Notre Dame. And they're still six spots down the board.

Context for anyone who missed last season: Indiana won the national title. Pate also spent the entire year picking against them and lost every single time — a fact he brings up himself, repeatedly, as a kind of public penance.

The case

Pate's argument isn't really about Indiana's ceiling. It's about voter behavior — the gap between what people privately believe (enough to hand them a first-place vote) and what they're willing to put in writing on the actual ballot. As Pate put it: “I think you're insane if you've got Indiana at number six. I've lived this life.”

That's the Film Room mechanism here, and it's worth walking through slowly. Before: a voter believes Indiana could be the best team in the country — enough to give them a first-place vote. Trigger: that same voter, or a different one entirely, still slots Indiana behind five other teams on the same ballot. Consequence: Indiana finishes third in top-line belief but sixth in overall ranking, which only works mathematically if a meaningful bloc of voters ranked them well outside the top five. “There has to be a number of you who voted them below six.”

Pate's challenge to that bloc is specific: name the thing about Georgia, Notre Dame, Oregon, or Texas that's concrete enough to justify that gap, then run that same standard back through everything doubted about Indiana a year ago. His own scorecard is the exhibit he keeps entering into evidence: “0 and5 record picking against Indiana last year.” He's not asking voters to crown Indiana. He's asking them to be honest about why the gap between belief and ballot is this wide.

Don't marry your preseason ballot. Somebody out there already has, and it's going to end badly.

The honest complication

Here's the part that keeps this from being a clean case. Pate himself concedes the premise that got him into trouble last year — assuming a team's prior form has to carry forward — cuts both directions. He's on record saying last year shouldn't blindly dictate this year's number, which means the same logic that says Indiana shouldn't be judged by last season's doubt also says Indiana isn't entitled to a top-three slot just because it won it all. The three-tier picture he lays out for the Big Ten backs that up: Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana are bunched at the top not because anyone's certain, but because nobody's certain about anything below them either. Indiana's own path runs through a league that includes Washington at No. 17, a team Pate flagged directly as a threat to the whole hierarchy: “Dude, Washington could wreck this whole thing because Washington's just floating in there at number 17.” If Washington does what Pate thinks it can do — beating up on Penn State, Indiana, and playing Oregon in November — the No. 6 conversation solves itself by December regardless of what any voter believes in August.

The close

Pate isn't demanding Indiana get bumped to number one. He's demanding consistency — that the same voters willing to hand Indiana a first-place vote in the privacy of a ballot actually defend the sixth slot out loud. Nobody's done that yet. Watch the full segment, check where your own gut lands Indiana against Georgia, Notre Dame, and Oregon, and then ask yourself if you can defend the gap Pate can't.