Never Saw Them Play

Every Day Should Be Saturday makes Deadspin look like the Dick Cavett show, but I have them in my Reader. Their latest post admonishes poll voters to get a DVR and watch all the games. This might be more important for voters for individual awards like the Outland Trophy. Football stats might not mean much on the individual level, but when it comes to ranking teams, can't you just use Sagarin Ratings or something similar as a guide? It might not be useful the first couple of weeks, but after enough iterations, you should be able to get a pretty clear picture of how to rank the various teams. BTW, what do D-II and D-III voters do? What about the NAIA?