Brian Cook

Rank	Team	PPB	Delta
1	Texas (73)	25.0	--
2	Alabama (1)	23.5	--
3	Penn State	23.3	--
4	Oklahoma	20.6	--
5	Florida	20.0	2
6	Texas Tech	19.7	2
7	Southern Cal	19.1	1
8	Georgia	18.7	1
9	Oklahoma State	17.7	4
10	Utah	16.1	1
11	Boise State	14.6	2
12	TCU	12.9	2
13	Ohio State	12.0	3
14	Missouri	11.4	3
15	Tulsa	9.0	5
16	Ball State	8.6	3
17	Minnesota	8.3	7
18	Florida State	8.1	8
19	LSU	7.4	7
20	Brigham Young	5.7	3
21	North Carolina	5.4	5
22	Michigan State	5.0	4
23	Oregon	3.4	3
24	Maryland	2.0	2
25	South Florida	1.4	10

Also Receiving Votes: California(1.2), Connecticut(1.1), West Virginia(0.8), Georgia Tech(0.6), Virginia(0.5), Oregon State(0.5), Pittsburgh(0.3), Iowa(0.1), Notre Dame(0.1), Kansas(0.1), Boston College(0.1), Louisville(0.1), South Carolina(0.1), Virginia Tech(0.0), Air Force(0.0), Duke(0.0), Central Michigan(0.0), Troy(0.0), Miami (Florida)(0.0), Fresno State(0.0), Cincinnati(0.0),

Total Ballots: 74

Votes by blog here, votes by team here.

Texas edges towards unanimity, with a single holdout still going for 'Bama. Meanwhile, Penn State is breathing down 'Bama's neck for number two, and then there's a major cliff to the rest of the top ten.

Further down, South Florida, Georgia Tech, Pitt, and LSU are all punished harshly for losses; the vacancies cause Minnesota, Florida State, and a host of others to jump up. We have a top-ten sighting for mid-major Utah.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

The thing that makes the least sense this week to some: Oklahoma State languishing behind Oklahoma. From Old Virginia sayeth:

I'm even more sold on keeping Oklahoma State above Oklahoma now, as they have both lost to the same team (which happens to be #1), and Okie State gave them a harder time of it, and it was in Austin instead of a neutral site.

Commenters on MGoBlog were bugging me about Oklahoma and Oklahoma State even before that, as Oklahoma State's best win is over Missouri and nothing Oklahoma has done can touch that.

Bring on the Cats isn't even in the poll (and is a Kansas State blog) but is exhorting Corn Nation to respect Okie State:

Oklahoma State is the real deal. They went into Austin, in front of 98,000 fans, against the clear No. 1 team in the country, and went blow-for-blow with Texas and lost by four. In my opinion, Okie State is the third best team in the conference right now, and depending on what we see out of Texas Tech this weekend against Texas, might be the second-best team in the conference. They are good.

After watching the Saturday night game between Penn State and Ohio State, I’m convinced Okie State is better than either of those teams.

Given the season results to date I think you can argue the only thing keeping the Sooners ahead of the Cowboys is name recognition.

Now on to the extracurriculars. First up are the teams which spur the most and least disagreement between voters as measured by standard deviation. Note that the standard deviation charts halt at #25 when looking for the lowest, otherwise teams that everyone agreed were terrible (say, Eastern Michigan) would all be at the top.

Most Disagreement

#	Team	StdDev
1	LSU	4.1
2	Ball State	4.0
3	Tulsa	4.0
4	Brigham Young	3.8
5	Missouri	3.4

LSU leaps to the top here, but more interesting is the mid-major trio immediately following. Voters are clearly having difficulty placing the undefeated teams from outside the Mountain West, and BYU's weird destruction of UCLA doesn't match up well with their weird obliteration at the hands of TCU.

Ballot Math

First up are "Mr. Bold" and "Mr. Numb Existence." The former goes to the voter with the ballot most divergent from the poll at large. The number you see is the average difference between a person's opinion of a team and the poll's opinion.

Mr. Bold

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	The Auburner	Auburn		3.35
2	Big Red Network	Nebraska		3.13
3	Burnt Orange Nation	Texas		2.92
4	Dawg Sports	Georgia		2.78
5	Buckeye Commentary	Ohio State		2.61

 The Auburner is your victor this week, and only one resume zealot even remains on the map. Margins descend as voters find themselves constricted further and further by "actual events" that happen "on the field," so we're getting less and less outlandish winners here.

Still, there are oddities:

• LSU #11, up one after giving up 52 to Georgia and losing by many points?
• Michigan State #13, nine slots higher than the poll at large. UNC also way up there.
• Major skepticism about the mid majors; though Utah is relatively near the poll's opinion at large, Boise idles at #17 and TCU languishes at #21.

Eh… given the difficulties I had assembling teams after #12 I sympathize with the Auburner (outside of that wack LSU vote), and given the current path of UCLA I think he might be right about the mid-majors.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		0.91
2	The Red Zone Report	Mississippi State		0.95
3	Double-T Nation	Texas Tech		1.12
4	The Hoosier Report	Indiana		1.16
5	The Ciskie Blog	Wisconsin		1.17

Michigan Sports Center takes Mr. Numb Existence and manages a winning margin under 1.0, which is always impressive. Michigan fans are all numb, anyway, after this abomination of a year.

I usually plug the winner here, but I've already plugged MSC—said blog is reaching Double Extra Point levels of creepy poll boredom—and will merely mention that it's the best place on the interwebs for Michigan news aggregation.

Next we have the Coulter/Krugman Award and the Straight Bangin' Award, which are again different sides of the same coin. The CKA and SBA go to the blogs with the highest and lowest bias rating, respectively. Bias rating is calculated by subtracting the blogger's vote for his own team from the poll-wide average. A high number indicates you are shameless homer. A low number indicates that you suffer from an abusive relationship with your football team.

The CK Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	TheES	Michigan State		4.96
2	The Mountain West Conference Connection	TCU		3.09
3	Block U	Utah		2.91
4	Tar Heel Mania	North Carolina		2.64
5	Mizzourah	Missouri		2.61

Last weeks CK Award evil eye didn't quite work out, as Missouri crushed Colorado to the tune of 58-0. I'm not sure what the spread was in that game, but I am sure that the CK Award winner is now 2-7 against it. I plead "not that bad," though:

As far as taunting the gods goes, though, this one is pretty meh: winning margin under five, ranking of #14 when Mizzou checks in #17 in the poll at large… the Gods aren't particularly offended by this one, I don't think.

They evidently were not. Either that or Dan Hawkins hasn't being going to communion.

This week, well, guess who's back? Yes, that guy, for placing Michigan State #16; State checks in at #22 in the poll at large. However, with the chaos in the midst of the poll this week it's hard to get too exercised when three other voters (including myself and the eminent Dr. Saturday) have State even higher than that and six others also put State at #16. When ten other voters are like "yeah, okay," it's not that bad.

The only thing that might offend is that guy's persistent impertinence; Michigan State takes on flailing, 4-4 Wisconsin this weekend.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		-4.04
2	Buckeye Commentary	Ohio State		-1.96
3	My Opinion on Sports	Oklahoma		-1.59
4	The Nittany Line	Penn State		-1.27
5	California Golden Blogs	California		-1.24

Saurian Sagacity is holding on to the Straight Bangin' Award for grim life—this is week four of their reign—but the margin keeps coming down as teams other than Florida display their lack of competence.

Here's an oddity: The Nittany Line is one of vanishingly few bloggers (five of seventy-four) to put Penn State anywhere other than 2 or 3. Penn State is #4; Texas Tech is #3. An attempted anti-jinx? No explanation over at TNL, unfortunately.

Swing is the total change in each ballot from last week to this week (obviously voters who didn't submit a ballot last week are not included). A high number means you are easily distracted by shiny things. A low number means that you're damn sure you're right no matter what reality says.

Mr. Manic-Depressive

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		186
2	mgoblog	Michigan		160
3	Dawg Sports	Georgia		158
4	Team Speed Kills	South Carolina		146
5	The Auburner	Auburn		144

Thanks, Tomahawk Nation, for sparing me the ignominy of winning one of my own awards by being even more ludicrously swing-laden than yours truly. In my case, the swing is from being spectacularly wrong about everyone under #12 in my poll: GT, Pitt, Wake all over-ranked versus the poll at large and all losers.

TN, on the other hand, left Texas Tech completely out of its last ballot and sprung them to #4 this week. Ballot error for the win!

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	From Old Virginia	Virginia		54
2	Off the Tracks	Purdue		70
3	The Mountain West Conference Connection	TCU		72
4	The Nittany Line	Penn State		74
5	CloneChronicles	Iowa State		76

From Old Virginia takes Mr. Stubborn for being exceptionally gentle: Oklahoma State is left alone after losing to Texas; GT slips only one spot. He also takes it for being skeptical about Pitt (not ranked) and some other losers who were towards the bottom of his ballot already.