Brian Cook

 

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Florida (32)	24.0	0.8	--
2	Alabama (37)	24.0	1.0	1
3	Texas (24)	23.8	0.9	1
4	TCU (1)	21.4	1.0	1
5	Cincinnati	21.3	0.8	1
6	Boise State	20.0	1.4	1
7	Georgia Tech	18.9	1.3	3
8	Pittsburgh	15.8	2.8	5
9	LSU	14.6	3.4	--
10	Oregon	14.2	2.6	2
11	Southern Cal	13.9	2.4	1
12	Ohio State	13.8	2.9	4
13	Iowa	13.5	3.8	7
14	Miami (Florida)	13.3	3.0	1
15	Houston	12.4	3.4	1
16	Utah	10.1	4.7	1
17	Arizona	8.6	3.0	1
18	Oklahoma State	7.8	2.9	1
19	Penn State	7.5	3.4	8
20	Virginia Tech	5.3	3.6	3
21	Wisconsin	4.6	2.8	3
22	Brigham Young	2.9	2.9	3
23	South Florida	2.6	2.7	3
24	Clemson	2.4	2.6	2
25	Oregon State	2.2	2.7	1

Also Receiving Votes: Stanford(2.0), West Virginia(1.2), Auburn(0.7), Texas Tech(0.5), Navy(0.4), Tennessee(0.2), Boston College(0.2), Temple(0.1), Nebraska(0.1), Rutgers(0.1), North Carolina(0.1), Central Michigan(0.1), Arkansas(0.1), Oklahoma(0.1), California(0.1), Troy(0.0), Mississippi(0.0), Northwestern(0.0), Kansas State(0.0), Notre Dame(0.0), Idaho(0.0),

Total Ballots: 94

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

It remains tight at the top, with Florida pulling in the most first place votes but losing out by a tiny margin to Alabama—I know the software says it's a tie, but Alabama has a couple more points than the Gators. Texas drops a slot but is basically in a dead heat with the two SEC powers, and then there's a dropoff.

But all that is window-dressing. The main event:

Justify Your Existence

Unlike the Coaches, Harris, and AP polls, Oregon is in front of a team they housed by 27 two weeks ago and shares the same record they do. Elsewhere, Oregon is as many as six spots behind Trojan royalty. Here, they are in front, albeit by an uncomfortably small margin.

That is all. The Blogpoll wins. I give up: we should use it for the BCS now. Yes, even though some people are clearly insane—as we'll see in the next section—the net has consistently made more sense than any of the other major polls.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

Your wack TCU voter is Tilting at Windmills . No explanation is given.

Other items:

• Right, USC above Oregon : many, many voters did this. If you are one of them, please review "47-20" kthx. You have not put enough thought into your ballots.
• On the other hand, Saurian Sagacity drops USC four spots for an ugly win over Arizona State and now has them nine slots behind Ohio State .
• This one is about as bad as putting USC above Oregon: at least a few voters have Iowa underneath Arizona, a team they beat by two scores and has a shiny loss to Washington on their resume to go with no win as impressive as Penn State. Dan Shanoff , Tilting at Windmills , and Braves & Birds all come in for scolding, especially because not one of them even mentioned Arizona's position relative to the Hawkeyes in this week's ballot.
• Toledo blog Let's Go Rockets has BYU #12 , six spots higher than any other voter.
• Navy gets a ton of "thanks for beating Notre Dame " #25 votes.
• Husker Mike will not be dissuaded from voting for Oklahoma ! They can lose to Baylor and Husker Mike will manage to jam them in at #25! They can go 3-9 and Husker Mike will hack the system so that his ballot goes to 75 teams!

Now on to the extracurriculars. First up are the teams which spur the most disagreement between voters as measured by standard deviation.

Most Disagreement

#	Team	StdDev
1	Utah	4.7
2	Iowa	3.8
3	Virginia Tech	3.6
4	Penn State	3.4
5	Houston	3.4

Oklahoma finally relinquishes the top spot here by virtue of a loss to Nebraska that finally knocks them out of ballots entirely. Utah, #16 without having done much of anything other than lose to Oregon, is a strong replacement. Check out their team profile : they get at least three votes in every slot from 8 to 24 save three.

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		3.65
2	Eagle in Atlanta	Boston College		3.19
3	Clone Chronicles	Iowa State		2.98
4	Let's Go Rockets	Toledo		2.94
5	Braves and Birds	Georgia		2.74

Tomahawk Nation is your winner here for some serious ACC bias: GT is #4, Miami (That Miami) #7, Clemson #13, and VT #14. That's three, seven, eleven, and six spots higher than the rest of the poll has them. Boise languishes at #10—which I get if you're putting a lot of emphasis on strength of schedule—and the Big Ten languishes, as does LSU.

Irritatingly, TN appears to have not posted the ballot, let alone attempt to explain the ACC slant to it.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	WSU Football Blog	Washington State		0.93
2	Mizzourah	Missouri		1.10
3	Beat Visitor	Rutgers		1.12
4	Not Qualified to Comment	Illinois		1.18
5	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		1.18

Yea, truly, the Mr. Numb Existence award has devolved to the teams that cause so much pain for their fans that all they can do when it comes time to put some teams in a top twenty-five is dully click the "chalk" button before moving on to the next pointless exercise in their meaningless lives. Rutgers is headed for a decent bowl, but other than that it's Worst BCS Team, Biggest Dropoff From Last Year To This Year, Most Disappointing BCS Team, Team That Lost To Most Disappointing BCS Team.

I should probably rename this category WHISKEY.

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	Block U	Utah		7.88
2	FNF Magazine: The Blog	South Florida		7.45
3	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		5.52
4	We Will Always Have Tempe	Ohio State		5.16
5	Eleven Warriors	Ohio State		4.16

This thing has always been sort of creepy, but last week it went from sort of creepy to officially creepy as hell: Notre Dame lost to two-touchdown underdog Navy despite not punting because of redzone turnovers and a last-minute safety on what was attempting to be another game-tying last-ditch drive. The CK Award, picked up by Subway Domer last week, may have ended Charlie Weis's tenure as Notre Dame's head coach.

The CK Award is now 8-2 against the spread and 7-3 straight up. The last two weeks it's killed heavy favorites West Virginia and Notre Dame against lesser competition. Fear the CK.

This week's whammy falls to Utah. This probably the first time in the history of the award—at least the first time since I've been tracking the thing's creepy power—that the winner is a three-score underdog, but it is so: TCU is favored by a whopping 20 points this weekend.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	CollegeGameBalls	Virginia Tech		-4.34
2	NittanyWhiteOut	Penn State		-3.46
3	The Lions Den	Penn State		-2.46
4	Gobbler Country	Virginia Tech		-1.34
5	The Smoking Musket	West Virginia		-1.20

This award sees a return of its previous tradition: disappointed powers overrating how bad their team is after a crushing loss. Hi, Penn State. It'll be okay.

But your winners here—and your #4 finisher—are Virginia Tech fans, who may be coming off a win but it's a 16-3 win against East Carolina and is nothing to write home about. The lingering stench of giving North Carolina its first ACC victory is enough for College Game Balls to stick the Hokies down at #25, giving them a decent-sized win.

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	Eagle in Atlanta	Boston College		138
2	Corn Nation	Nebraska		114
3	Gate 21	Tennessee		112
4	Braves and Birds	Georgia		110
5	TheUConnBlog	Connecticut		110

When you drop a team that went from 9-0 to 9-1 entirely out of your poll, and eject a couple other teams for no particular reason and totally hammer Penn State and LSU for losing against excellent competition… you win this easily. Eagle In Atlanta's had enough of this Iowa crap : the Hawkeyes plummet from #8 to entirely out of the poll, falling behind Penn State, who Iowa beat and has a better record than.

Surely this is an error, right?

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Anton Azucar	Miami (Florida)		50
2	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		52
3	Beat Visitor	Rutgers		52
4	The Nittany Line	Penn State		54
5	Foul Balls	Notre Dame		56

Miami blogger Anton Azucar narrowly edges out the field here thanks to existing skepticism over Oklahoma and Notre Dame (dropping out of the poll from 21 and 23, respectively) and kindness towards Iowa, down only four after losing to Northwestern this weekend.