| Rank | Team | PPB | StdDev | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama (35) | 24.1 | 0.8 |  1 |
| 2 | Texas (21) | 23.8 | 0.9 | 1 |
| 3 | Florida (26) | 23.7 | 1.1 |  2 |
| 4 | TCU (3) | 22.0 | 1.1 | -- |
| 5 | Cincinnati | 21.0 | 0.7 | -- |
| 6 | Boise State | 20.0 | 1.2 | -- |
| 7 | Georgia Tech | 19.1 | 1.0 | -- |
| 8 | Pittsburgh | 17.2 | 1.6 | -- |
| 9 | Oregon | 16.0 | 1.5 | 1 |
| 10 | Ohio State | 16.0 | 1.8 | 2 |
| 11 | LSU | 15.5 | 2.1 | 2 |
| 12 | Oklahoma State | 12.4 | 2.8 | 6 |
| 13 | Stanford | 11.0 | 3.8 | 13 |
| 14 | Iowa | 11.0 | 3.7 | 1 |
| 15 | Penn State | 10.8 | 3.5 | 4 |
| 16 | Virginia Tech | 9.1 | 3.6 | 4 |
| 17 | Wisconsin | 8.5 | 3.6 | 4 |
| 18 | Clemson | 7.0 | 3.7 | 6 |
| 19 | Oregon State | 5.5 | 3.6 | 6 |
| 20 | Miami (Florida) | 5.4 | 2.9 | 6 |
| 21 | Southern Cal | 4.8 | 3.4 | 10 |
| 22 | Brigham Young | 4.4 | 4.3 | -- |
| 23 | Utah | 3.9 | 3.4 | 7 |
| 24 | Houston | 3.4 | 3.6 | 9 |
| 25 | North Carolina | 1.8 | 2.6 | 1 |
Also Receiving Votes: Arizona(1.6), Rutgers(1.4), California(1.0), Nebraska(0.9), Navy(0.7), West Virginia(0.4), Oklahoma(0.3), Temple(0.2), Mississippi(0.2), Boston College(0.2), Central Michigan(0.2), Washington(0.1), Northwestern(0.1), Nevada(0.1), Texas Tech(0.1), Arkansas(0.0), South Florida(0.0),
Total Ballots: 85
Votes by blog here , votes by team here .
There is not longer any controversy about whether USC should be higher than Oregon, eh? I'm not sure if the Blogpoll should thank Stanford for making the point so emphatically or curse them for removing what was sure to be a weeks-long abomination. In any case, they make a huge leap from unranked to #13—virtually unprecedented this late in the season—and USC slides all the way to #21.
Elsewhere, Florida's taken a back seat again after another meh performance against questionable competition, sliding from #1 to #3 in the weekly carousel of things that don't matter at the top of the polls. Alabama reasserts their claim to the top spot.
The rest is pretty static.
Justify Your Existence
All three major polls maintain their season-long coronation of Florida, so the Blogpoll is once again different at the very top. From there many differences have been ironed out by events on the field, but there remains one major win for bloggers versus the mainstream guys this week: the poll above manages to slot Iowa, its head to head win, and its vastly superior resume ahead of Penn State, whereas the other major polls have the Nittany Lions two or three spots in front of the Hawkeyes.
Other items:
- Relative to the coaches, bloggers love Miami and Stanford, both of whom are up four slots…
- …and they hate Penn State, Wisconsin, and BYU. The former two are down three, the latter down four.
Wack Ballot Watchdog
Our TCU #1 votes spread like weeds, with Dan Shanoff and Tilting at Windmills being joined by Block U . Block U witnessed a first-hand demolition, so that makes sense. The other two guys still don't provide much, if any, reasoning for their placement. Shanoff does hit on a good point , though:
I'm going to give TCU a lot of credit for thumping Utah -- it's a more quality win than any Texas will have this season (certainly more than any Texas will finish with).
Texas's best win will be against Oklahoma, a team that lost to BYU, who Utah killed.
Other items:
- Why is Syracuse blog Orange::44 voting Northwestern #17 ? Northwestern lost to Syracuse! If there's any blog on the planet that has seen Northwestern's status as a non top-25 team up close and personal it's Orange::44. That's the only NU vote in the poll.
- Elsewhere in weird single votes, Maryland blog Around The Harbor goes for South Florida at #24 . And Mizzourah must be joking with 3-7 Washington #15 .
- Every week some guy votes Oklahoma up high for reasons unknown; this time it's Rocky Top Talk shooting them up to #15 .
- Bruce Ciskie has West Virginia #13 , five slots higher than any other voter and that's just one guy in a poll consisting of mostly ballots on which WVU is unranked.
- Iowa gets votes in every slot from 8 to 25, and Miami is somewhere from 14 to 24 except definitely not 17th. We are in agreement that Miami is not the 17th best team in the country.
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 | Brigham Young | 4.3 |
| 2 | Stanford | 3.8 |
| 3 | Clemson | 3.7 |
| 4 | Iowa | 3.7 |
| 5 | Wisconsin | 3.6 |
BYU is your default victor, as a mid-major in the teens almost always is. Stanford shoots up into the "where do I put these guys?" range, which is better than their previous "not in the poll" range.
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 | Black Heart Gold Pants | Iowa |  |
3.29 |
| 2 | Let's Go Rockets | Toledo | |
3.00 |
| 3 | Rocky Top Talk | Tennessee | |
2.93 |
| 4 | Orange::44 | Syracuse | |
2.89 |
| 5 | Hey Jenny Slater | Georgia | |
2.76 |
This isn't a huge number at the top of of the list here and the corresponding ballot isn't too crazy, but it does display a distinct Big Ten bias—OSU up three, Iowa up five, Penn State up four from actual poll positions—and hates on Georgia Tech for some reason. New poll darling Stanford is provided admission only grudgingly, as they check in at #23, and BHGP's season-long LSU hating continues.
Mr. Numb Existence
| # | Blog | Team | Avg Error | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1t | The Wolverine Blog | Michigan | |
0.91 |
| 1t | WSU Football Blog | Washington State | |
0.91 |
| 3 | Card Chronicle | Louisville | |
0.96 |
| 4 | My Opinion on Sports | Oklahoma | |
1.03 |
| 5 | Michigan Sports Center | Michigan | |
1.06 |
The season-long theme here holds: the award for a numb existence is exclusively populated by dull-eyed football zombies looking forward to the season's end, with Michigan and Washington State blogs tying for the win and Louisville, Oklahoma, and Michigan (again) rounding out the list. Let this be an unofficial account of fan misery.
This year is not good for perfect ballots since there's so much disagreement at the top that we haven't gotten past spot two for a while.
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 | Black Heart Gold Pants | Iowa | |
5.96 |
| 2 | Beat Visitor | Rutgers | |
5.62 |
| 3 | The Nittany Line | Penn State | |
3.20 |
| 4 | Fantasy College Blitz | Oklahoma State | |
2.62 |
| 5 | Mountain West Connection | TCU | |
2.05 |
The CK Award continued its run of mayhem, condemning Utah to a 55-28 defeat by TCU and running its record on the season to 9-2 against the spread and 8-3 straight up.
This week's whammy falls to Iowa, again, as Black Heart, Gold Pants ranks the Hawkeyes 9th. In Iowa's first go-round as the CK Award curse recipient, they narrowly avoided a loss against Arkansas State in a game that ended 24-21. We might see something similar when the Hawkeyes close their season against terrible Minnesota. Iowa is a ten-point favorite.
The Straight Bangin' Award
| # | Blog | Team | Bias | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CollegeGameBalls | Virginia Tech | |
-4.14 |
| 2 | Conquest Chronicles | Southern Cal | |
-2.84 |
| 3 | Gobbler Country | Virginia Tech | |
-2.14 |
| 4 | Dan Shanoff | Florida | |
-1.73 |
| 5 | Anton Azucar | Miami (Florida) | |
-1.44 |
Virginia Tech and College Game Balls continue their run at the top of this category, with the winning ballot placing VT #21. Odd to see Dan Shanoff in here since the Gators should be locked into everyone's top three, but Shanoff is one of our TCU voters and this bumps the Gators down to #4.
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 | Block U | Utah | |
156 |
| 2 | Over the Pylon | Ball State | |
150 |
| 3 | Tilting at WindMills | Oklahoma | |
138 |
| 4 | Dan Shanoff | Florida | |
136 |
| 5 | Subway Domer | Notre Dame | |
136 |
Whee! Block U is fed up with this crazy world and is turning it upside down. USC: out. Miami (That Miami): out. Arizona: out. Houston and Utah: not quite out but seriously thinking about out. And the award-winning coup de grace: Florida down five from #1 to #6. That extra bit of poll wandering is the winning margin.
Mr. Stubborn
| # | Blog | Team | Swing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1t | Buffs.tv | Colorado | |
72 |
| 1t | From Old Virginia | Virginia | |
72 |
| 1t | mgoblog | Michigan | |
72 |
| 1t | Big Red Network | Nebraska | |
72 |
| 5 | Foul Balls | Notre Dame | |
76 |
A four-way tie at the top and a number as high as 72 means that this category isn't flagging any super-weird ballots, as all these categories are designed to do, and the general snark has been suspended for this category.
