Brian Cook

Rank	Team	PPB	Delta
1	Texas Tech (48)	24.7	--
2	Alabama (16)	23.9	--
3	Florida (6)	22.7	1
4	Texas	22.3	1
5	Oklahoma	20.9	--
6	Southern Cal	20.1	--
7	Penn State	18.1	--
8	Utah	17.8	--
9	Boise State	15.7	--
10	Oklahoma State	15.6	--
11	Ohio State	15.3	--
12	Missouri	14.2	--
13	Georgia	13.3	--
14	Michigan State	10.6	2
15	Ball State	9.7	1
16	TCU	9.2	1
17	Brigham Young	8.1	1
18	Oregon State	7.5	5
19	Cincinnati	7.4	3
20	Pittsburgh	6.4	--
21	LSU	4.1	--
22	Maryland	3.4	4
23	Miami (Florida)	3.4	3
24	North Carolina	2.7	9
25	Oregon	2.5	1

Also Receiving Votes: Boston College(1.7), Georgia Tech(0.8), Florida State(0.6), Northwestern(0.5), Iowa(0.3), Western Michigan(0.3), Central Michigan(0.2), West Virginia(0.2), California(0.2), Mississippi(0.1), Connecticut(0.1), Virginia Tech(0.1), Wake Forest(0.1), Nebraska(0.0), Air Force(0.0), Syracuse(0.0), Rice(0.0),

Total Ballots: 70

Votes by blog here, votes by team here.

A placid week with no clashes between titans and no preposterous upsets. Texas Tech retains its grip on the top spot and Alabama has to deal with a hard-charging Florida, which used its domination of the OBC to spring past Texas. (An assist to God on that one.)

Cincinnati gets the biggest boost and North Carolina takes the most precipitous fall, but like most of college football's punditry, the BlogPoll treats last week as an annoying seven day period to wait before getting to this week.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

The weirdest thing this week is that "6" by Florida up there, right? I wonder if anyone went to the trouble of justifying that beyond "holy pants that's a lot of points against South Carolina." No, no, no… yes! Team Speed Kills on his Florida #1 vote:

This week, let's take a look at my Top 5 by teams' win-loss record, points per game, opponents' points per game, points per game differential and strength of schedule rank as determined by Sagarin. (No, I don't like him any better than any of you do. Find me a better, widely-recognized measure and I'll use it.)

Against a far tougher schedule, Florida has a PPGD that's at least five points higher than anyone else in my Top 5, against a schedule that is either tougher or one slot less difficult than anyone else in my Top 5.

Argue "running up the score" if you want, but let me ask you this: Has Alabama given any indication, aside from the Georgia game, that it could run up the score on a good team if it wanted to? (And Clemson is 5-5 in the ACC with two of those wins over FCS teams -- so, no, they don't count as a good team.) You can't choose not to run up the score if you're not capable of doing so in the first place.

That's a compelling argument. Balancing losses versus strength of schedule and overall performance has always been the trickiest part of ranking teams. Clearly, Florida has performed better overall than conference-mate Alabama, but they had the misfortune to lose and Alabama had the good fortune to escape their close games. It's moot this year since Florida will be in the title  game if they win the SEC, but questions like that have plagued the BCS since its inception.

Now on to the extracurriculars. First up are the teams which spur the most 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	Ball State	4.5
2	Brigham Young	4.3
3	TCU	3.6
4	Boise State	3.2
5	LSU	3.1

This domain is often the realm of mid-major teams and here they have a near clean sweep, with only wildly schizophrenic LSU breaking up the party.

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	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		2.89
2	Eagle in Atlanta	Boston College		2.64
3	CollegeGameBalls	Virginia Tech		2.61
4	mgoblog	Michigan		2.60
5	And The Valley Shook!	LSU		2.57

Tomahawk Nation is a repeat Mr. Bold winner; last week they won by hating on the mid-majors and throwing in some other oddities like #14 South Carolina. This week: pretty much the same. Someone did prevail on TN to give Utah a chance, as they have wins over BYU, Oregon State and (uh, is this impressive?) Michigan, and the Utes surge eight spots. Everyone else outside a BCS conference can get bent.

Hey, I'm generally on TN's side here—I think the mid-majors in the poll above are generally overrated—but Utah is still under Oregon State, which, like… ain't right.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Around the Oval	Ohio State		0.83
2	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		0.85
3	California Golden Blogs	California		0.97
4	Black Shoe Diaries	Penn State		0.98
5	Lake The Posts	Northwestern		0.99

Your Mr. Numb Existence winner for what I believe is the third time this year is Around The Oval. The Big Ten has a near-lock on this category—probably has something to do with the weather.

Next we have the Coulter/Kos 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 Coulter/Kos Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Addicted to Quack	Oregon		5.53
2	TheES	Michigan State		4.37
3	Eagle in Atlanta	Boston College		3.34
4	Block U	Utah		3.21
5	Mizzourah	Missouri		2.80

The CK Award winner last week saw his team take on BYE, so the crown of thorns fell to runner-up ACC Football Report, which supports Florida State. The Seminoles proceeded to lose to Boston College 27-17, causing a "fire everyone" diatribe on the aforementioned Tomahawk Nation and dropping CK Award winners to 3-8 against the spread. To put this in perspective via analogy:

CK Award Winner : Spread :: Michigan : Rest of college football

That's evil in a box, man.

This week the evil eye passes to Oregon, which Addicted to Quack ranked #17. #17? That's it? I don't know if the malevolent Gods of excessive homerdom will even cock an eyebrow at Oregon in front of luminaries like Pittsburgh, Maryland, and Ball State. Eh, they've still got the whammy this weekend.  Oregon takes on… aw, hell, nobody. They've got a bye before the Civil War. The whammy, appropriately, falls to Michigan State, which dodged it last weekend. Penn State, do your worst.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Pitt Blather	Pittsburgh		-6.43
2	Braves and Birds	Georgia		-3.33
3	And The Valley Shook!	LSU		-3.13
4	Tar Heel Mania	North Carolina		-2.67
5	50-Yard Lion	Penn State		-1.10

Straight Bangin’ award remains the exclusive property of the diehard Pitt skeptics at Pitt Blather, who isn't tempting fate in the run up to a defacto Big East championship game against Cincinnati:

Yes, especially this week am I not taking any chances.

Elsewhere, can you blame And The Valley Shook's skepticism at this point? I say no.

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		108
2	Big Red Network	Nebraska		106
3	CollegeGameBalls	Virginia Tech		96
4	BC Interruption	Boston College		88
5	Football Outsiders	Michigan		88

A mostly boring week leads to lower winning margins in this category.

Tomahawk Nation pulls off the impressive feat of retaining Mr. Bold and winning Mr. Manic Depressive in the same week. Usually it's hard for an outlying ballot to change a lot without getting significantly closer to the norm. A large portion of the winning margin here is the disappearance of South Carolina, previously #14, for obvious reasons; that weird vote gave TN the edge.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Bama Sports Report	Alabama		26
2	Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician	Syracuse		30
3	The Mountain West Conference Connection	TCU		32
4	SoCal Sports Hub	Southern Cal		32
5	The Nittany Line	Penn State		34

The Bama Sports Report is your Mr. Stubborn, and this may in fact be one of the stubbornest ballots of all time: no one above #18 moves. It's safe to say last weekend was something of a dud.