Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Florida (33)	24.1	0.8	1
2	Texas (34)	23.9	1.1	1
3	Alabama (20)	23.6	1.1	2
4	Cincinnati	20.6	1.5	--
5	TCU	20.1	1.8	1
6	Iowa	20.1	1.9	1
7	Boise State	19.8	1.6	--
8	Oregon	18.9	1.5	1
9	LSU	16.8	1.8	1
10	Georgia Tech	16.2	1.3	1
11	Penn State	15.0	1.8	1
12	Southern Cal	12.6	2.0	4
13	Pittsburgh	12.1	2.4	2
14	Houston	11.5	2.8	2
15	Miami (Florida)	10.3	2.9	2
16	Ohio State	9.8	2.4	2
17	Utah	9.0	3.6	2
18	Arizona	7.0	2.9	4
19	Oklahoma State	6.3	3.0	5
20	Notre Dame	4.9	3.1	4
21	California	4.4	2.7	5
22	Oklahoma	4.3	4.0	1
23	Virginia Tech	3.7	3.3	10
24	Wisconsin	3.6	2.6	2
25	Brigham Young	1.8	2.5	1

Also Receiving Votes: South Florida(1.7), Clemson(0.6), Texas Tech(0.4), West Virginia(0.3), Auburn(0.2), Oregon State(0.2), Rutgers(0.2), Mississippi(0.1), Tennessee(0.1), Troy(0.1), Duke(0.1), Temple(0.1), Boston College(0.1), Central Michigan(0.1), Idaho(0.0), Arkansas(0.0), Nebraska(0.0), North Carolina(0.0), South Carolina(0.0),

Total Ballots: 87

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

Bad week to have a bye for Alabama. The Tide sat idle as it watched its two main competitors for #1 pound opponents and dropped behind both of them. Seeing their marquee nonconference win get pounded and fall out of the ACC title race once and for all didn't help, either.

As a result: there is a new #1. It is the old #1, Florida, but now Texas actually has more first-place votes. The margins are so small here that the poll could see more shifts as the season steams towards a conclusion, assuming the top three keep winning.

Elsewhere, Oregon is still locked into the spot directly behind Boise State because of their opening-weekend loss; I wonder if there's anything Oregon can do the rest of the season that would see them leap the Broncos. Stanford, Arizona State, Arizona, and Oregon State are all at least decent, and Arizona is enjoying a top-20 ranking at the moment. Boise will finish out against WAC opponents. At what point does strength of schedule overcome a head-to-head loss?

Justify Your Existence

The Blogpoll falls back into the same order at the top that the other polls have with the Alabama decline, which is unfortunate for hey-we're-cool purposes but the right move given the events of the weekend. And things are beginning to calcify as other polls take "the season that his happening" into account, reducing the variance between the bloggers and others. Major differences this week between the Coaches' and bloggers:

• Cinci is #4 here, #7 there, behind Iowa, Boise, and TCU.
• Ohio State is #16 here, #12 there.

There are a bunch of other one and two slot disagreements; we're down to just two major outliers.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

No weird #1s so just bullets:

• Weird votes late in the ballot: Husker Mike goes for Arkansas , a 4-4 team that's 1-4 in the SEC, #22. Tar Heel Mania is the only voter going for CMU after their solid loss to BC, and he's got them #20. And I think this is a first in blogpoll history: a trio of non-ironic votes for Duke. Which Duke may well deserve.
• The single most hateful vote in the poll is Black Heart, Gold Pants dropping LSU down to #19, which is seven spots worse than any other voter ranked the Tigers. That seems mighty hypocritical given Iowa's status as another team with a pretty record that's lived on the edge this fall and their spot—third—on the BHGP ballot. Show us on the doll, BHGP.
• The single most insane Cupid moment in the poll is The Daily Gopher's continued romance with Ole Miss . The Rebels are now 2-3 in the SEC after a 13-point loss to Auburn and their best nonconference win is UAB. Two voters slide them in #25; TDG still has them #15. They drop only two slots after their latest uncompetitive loss.
• Penn State has folk ranking them #5 or #6 and then as low as #18 .
• Northern Illinois blog Red and Black Attack has a bit of a mid-major fetish : TCU #2 and Boise shoots up to #3 after Oregon's win. This displaces Florida and Alabama, which find themselves lower on this ballot than any other in the poll. Texas is #1.
• No, I don't get why Oklahoma is high up on a bunch of ballots . 5-3 with best win Kansas, loss against BYU looking uglier every week, okay you kept it close against some good teams… this is not a top 15 team right now except for the 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	Oklahoma	4.0
2	Utah	3.6
3	Virginia Tech	3.3
4	Notre Dame	3.1
5	Oklahoma State	3.0

Oklahoma is officially this year's most confusing team, as they've been at or near the top of this category ever since Sam Branford's shoulder exploded.

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		3.25
2	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		3.04
3	The Daily Gopher	Minnesota		2.64
4	And The Valley Shook!	LSU		2.58
5	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		2.55

BHGP wrests this award back from Husker Mike in the race to become king of weird late-season ballots. Reasons why include :

• Super Big Ten hurray forever . Three Big Ten teams are wildly overrated relative to the rest of the poll: #3 Iowa, #6 Penn State, and #16 Wisconsin.
• Les Miles did something horrible to me . LSU is #19.
• I hate fun, and Houston . Georgia Tech is #14. Houston languishes at #20.

It's not a super-weird ballot. I've seen more bizarre ones.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Around the Harbor	Maryland		0.81
2	Not Qualified to Comment	Illinois		0.88
3	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		0.94
4	Double Extra Point	Nebraska		1.08
5	The Lions Den	Penn State		1.17

A Washington State blog numbly punched in a chalk ballot last week and returned to his doctor-recommended diet of whiskey and gravel; this week it's Around the Harbor , a Maryland blog, executing the same trudge towards oblivion/the end of the season. Note that the next three blogs here are not exactly enjoying stellar seasons.

The perfect ballot quest is still a long way off with all this chaos at the top: Around The Harbor doesn't get past #2 Alabama before he's got a disagreement with the poll at large.

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	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		5.06
2	Block U	Utah		3.98
3	The Lions Den	Penn State		2.97
4	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		2.92
5	Mountain West Connection	TCU		2.90

The CK Award claimed another victim, as two-time-consecutive winner West Virginia could not escape the whammy this week, falling in a weird Friday night game against USF despite being favored. The CK Award is now 7-2 against the spread this year and 6-3 straight up, with one of those losses being Arkansas State at Iowa. It is uncanny.

With the West Virginia folk dropping out of the way, Subway Domer ascends to the top of the list after weeks of hanging around in second or third as he watched the Irish come down to the final play against anyone better than Washington State. It's too bad the now extremely interesting game at Pitt is next week; this week Notre Dame has traditional rival-type-substance Navy. Notre Dame is favored by 11.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	CollegeGameBalls	Virginia Tech		-3.75
2	California Golden Blogs	California		-1.37
3	Dan Shanoff	Florida		-1.14
4	And The Valley Shook!	LSU		-0.77
5	Roll Bama Roll	Alabama		-0.60

Finally we see the return of this category's long-running theme: my team lost and disappointed me so I will show them by ranking them lower than everyone else. This week's winner and the only guy to get above a slot or two is College Game Balls , which reacts to the end of Virginia Tech's ACC run by totally omitting the Hokies from his poll.

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	Roll Bama Roll	Alabama		120
2	Over the Pylon	Ball State		118
3	Corn Nation	Nebraska		106
4	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		106
5	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		102

Chaos is getting significantly reduced, with Alabama blog Roll Bama Roll taking this with a relatively low number. There's a significant amount of movement on the ballot, with a bad bet on CMU (previously #16) and excessive faith in Oklahoma State and VaTech, coupled with strong reactions to those folk losing, are the difference.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1t	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		50
1t	mgoblog	Michigan		50
3	One Bronco Nation Under God	Boise State		52
4	Clone Chronicles	Iowa State		52
5	The Nittany Line	Penn State		56

A tie at the top featuring Rocky Top Talk and MGoBlog , my home site. This is the second time Tim has won the Mr. Stubborn award this year. I will have a talk with him that he will not listen to, evidently. Reasons for victory here are mostly leaving Oklahoma State and VT rather high (they drop only two and four slots, respectively), which is enough for the slight edge that got him the award. Very strange to see a ballot on which 80% of the teams move winning here.

As far as RTT goes, it's similar: Oklahoma State and VT drop only six spots btween them and everyone else moves around a little bit but not much. WVU doesn't even slide out of the poll, sticking in at #21.

 

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Alabama (46)	24.2	0.9	--
2	Florida (24)	23.9	0.9	--
3	Texas (17)	23.4	1.2	--
4	Cincinnati	20.4	1.9	--
5	Iowa (2)	20.3	2.1	--
6	TCU (2)	19.8	2.1	2
7	Boise State	19.2	2.0	--
8	Southern Cal	19.1	2.1	2
9	Oregon	16.2	1.8	2
10	LSU	16.2	2.1	--
11	Georgia Tech	15.6	1.6	1
12	Penn State	13.7	2.2	1
13	Virginia Tech	12.2	2.1	1
14	Oklahoma State	12.2	2.4	1
15	Pittsburgh	9.7	2.7	3
16	Houston	9.5	3.2	1
17	Miami (Florida)	8.7	2.9	8
18	Ohio State	7.3	2.9	2
19	Utah	6.3	3.4	--
20	West Virginia	5.8	2.7	2
21	South Carolina	4.6	2.7	2
22	Arizona	4.3	2.8	4
23	Oklahoma	2.8	3.5	3
24	Notre Dame	2.6	3.0	2
25	Mississippi	2.1	2.9	1

Also Receiving Votes: Central Michigan(1.7), California(1.1), Brigham Young(0.7), Wisconsin(0.5), Clemson(0.2), Kansas(0.2), Navy(0.1), Arkansas(0.1), Texas Tech(0.1), Oregon State(0.1), Georgia(0.0), Central Florida(0.0), Troy(0.0), South Florida(0.0), Rutgers(0.0), Connecticut(0.0),

Total Ballots: 91

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

Iffy performances by both SEC powerhouses, with Alabama's being considerably iffier, see first-place votes shift away from the formerly dominant Tide to Florida, Texas, Iowa, and even TCU. Alabama still maintains its grip on #1, and there's no danger of anyone in the top three falling out without a loss: after Texas's 23.4 points per ballot the next team in the poll, Cincinnati, is a full three points back.

Elsewhere it's fairly boring, with Miami taking a tumble for its loss to Clemson and the back end of the poll getting wiped out and replaced with poll debutant Arizona and a few other teams who've hopped in and out this season.

Justify Your Existence

The AP poll's one-week dalliance with Alabama #1 came to an end, leaving the Blogpoll the only poll in all the land with Alabama #1. The other striking feature of the blogpoll is its wish to hurt USC. USC is #8 here and  #4 in the AP/Coaches poll. If Texas eats it and Cincinnati or Iowa  go undefeated this poll may have a different opinion of who should play for the national title than the actual polls do.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

Now that the #1 votes are spreading out from their status last week (overwhelmingly Alabama with some Florida stragglers and one or two folks going for Texas), let's focus on the arguments for the outlying #1 votes. Two voters went for TCU. Irritatingly, Dan Shanoff provides no explanation other than "TCU!" and Tilting at Windmills doesn't even go that far. Lame.

The lack of explanation is probably because there just isn't one unless the only football game you saw this year is TCU-BYU. TCU's beaten Virginia solidly and Clemson narrowly, escaped from Air Force by three, and then clobbered BYU, which I'll remind you is something that Florida State has done this year. This is a nice resume, definitely a top 15 team. It doesn't come close to beating out those of Florida, Alabama, Iowa, and even Texas.

Two others went for Iowa, citing the Hawkeye's excellent strength of schedule thanks to its fortune with Arizona and sudden bowl-threat Iowa State. Dawg Sports :

The Iowa Hawkeyes earned the top spot on my ballot, in spite of their narrow escapes against Arkansas State and Division I-AA Northern Iowa, because their six triumphs over teams at or above .500 include solid victories over the 17th-ranked Penn St. Nittany Lions and the 21st-ranked Arizona Wildcats , as well as wins of moderate quality against the likes of the Wisconsin Badgers and the now slightly less wholly unworthy Iowa St. Cyclones .

Dr. Saturday … well, Dr. Saturday does not have his poll post up right now. But I'm sure when he does it will have similar justifications based on strength of schedule that will get weaker as the season progresses. Iowa's got three home games against Big Ten dregs (Indiana, Northwestern, and Minnesota) coming up with one trip to Columbus standing between them and (probably) a national title shot.

A few other oddities:

• Dan Shanoff shot Florida down to #4 and Alabama down to #5 after the weekend's events, which seems kind of silly when the beneficiaries are Cincinnati and TCU.
• Hail to the Orange (an Illinois blog, not a Syracuse one) left Miami #8 despite their loss to Clemson.
• Not one but two voters have Oklahoma #9. One of them will win Mr. Bold below. The other is Buckeye Commentary .

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	Oklahoma	3.5
2	Utah	3.3
3	Houston	3.2
4	Mississippi	2.9
5	Miami (Florida)	2.9

Oklahoma, which we'll get to in a moment, is a winner here. Weird year when this isn't dominated by the questionable undeafated mid-major. This year the questionable undefeated mid-major is in the top ten.

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	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		3.90
2	Buckeye Commentary	Ohio State		3.36
3	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		3.19
4	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		2.85
5	Frank Helps You	Tulane		2.68

Husker Mike's Blasphemy comes in solidly on top of this category for some extreme Big 12 love and Big 10 hatred: Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, respectively #23 and #14 above, come in at #9 and #10 on his ballot. Iowa doesn't show until #14. Unranked Arkansas also finds its way to  #16, in front of Penn State. Mike is the only voter going for Arkansas at all. Other oddities dot the ballot but those are the most extreme. Oklahoma! #9!

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	WSU Football Blog	Washington State		0.91
2	Yet Another N.C. State Sports Blog	North Carolina State		0.94
3	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		0.95
4	Red and Black Attack	Northern Illinois		0.97
5	The Only Colors	Michigan State		1.06

This is what I like to see in when it comes to Mr. Numb Existence: Washington State at the top, followed by NC State and Michigan. It doesn't feel right when the chalk is getting submitted by teams that aren't trudging through a miserable gray season. We're still nowhere near the hypothetical perfect ballot; WSU Football Blog doesn't even get past #1 before a change (Florida is its choice for the top spot). Margins are dipping as more information comes in, though.

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	The Smoking Musket	West Virginia		6.19
2	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		5.49
3	WVU Pressbox	West Virginia		5.19
4	Conquest Chronicles	Southern Cal		3.91
5	Men of the Scarlet and Gray	Ohio State		3.69

A late blip-gone run from Noel Devine saved West Virginia's bacon against UConn and prevented the CK Award from winning straight up, but a four point win for WVU does beat the spread and sends the award to 6-2 on the year there. (It's 5-3 straight up, with one of those losses being the Arkansas State-Iowa game.) Also, remember earlier in the season when three Nebraska voters had huge 8-11 point margins for two consecutive weeks? And remember how the award was thwarted by a furious fourth-quarter comeback in a monsoon against Missouri?

Yeah.

Sat, Oct 17 -- Texas Tech -- 10 - 31 (L)
Sat, Oct 24 --Iowa State -- 7 - 9 (L)

That latter game featured eight (eight!) turnovers. The CK Award took a bye week of its own, then rained down the thunder on Nebraska for its two weeks of insolence. As always, the lesson is don't vote your team too high in a poll because malevolent entities from opposite ends of the political spectrum will rip your team from limb to limb.

This week's winner is again West Virginia, though this time the victorious blog is The Smoking Musket . Chagrined, WVU Pressbox has slightly scaled back its enthusiasm. West Virginia gets… bler. South Florida. Remarkably, West Virginia is only a three-point favorite, so it will be tough to win with the points without winning straight up. How is this possible when USF's been humiliated by Pitt and Cincinnati its last two trips out? Grumble.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	My Opinion on Sports	Oklahoma		-2.83
2	Dan Shanoff	Florida		-1.89
3	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-1.83
4	SportsFrog	Central Michigan		-1.73
5	Foul Balls	Notre Dame		-1.51

Thin gruel here as no team in the midst of a top-ten season has lost ignominiously in a while. I mean, when you get a Central Michigan voter in the top five you know it's a lean year for seasoon-changing upsets. MOOS wins for taking the completely reasonable step of omitting Oklahoma from its poll.

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	Oread Boom Kings	Kansas		298
2	Braves and Birds	Georgia		128
3	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		110
4	Clone Chronicles	Iowa State		108
5	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		106

Um. Please pay no attention to the spectacular number put up by Oread Boom Kings , as there was a glitch in the system last week that saw their ballot only register a top nine . I've never seen that before. I'll investigate.

Your real winner is Georgia blog Braves and Birds, which wasn't going to take the SEC teams' poor performance lying down. Texas gets bumped to #1. And only two teams—#11 Boise State and #23 South Carolina—remain static. Miami, VT, Texas Tech, Arkansas, and BYU all plummet. LSU, Pitt, Penn State, and a host of teams that slide up three or four slots are the main beneficiaries. This ballot is a classic example of late-season high swing events: you bet on a bunch of teams that run out and get crushed, and next week you hurl them out for their impertinence.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		16
2	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		34
3	Gate 21	Tennessee		38
4	My Opinion on Sports	Oklahoma		44
5	Football Outsiders	Syracuse		44

Also pay no attention to Rocky Top Talk at the top of this list; that was another glitch. It's been that kind of week. Your real winner is Husker Mike's Blasphemy, which we've already talked about. The blasphemy.

 

Rank	Team	PPB	Delta
1	Alabama (73)	24.8	--
2	Florida (16)	24.0	--
3	Texas (1)	22.9	--
4	Cincinnati	20.6	3
5	Iowa	19.9	4
6	Boise State	19.5	1
7	Southern Cal	19.5	1
8	TCU	17.3	3
9	Miami (Florida)	17.2	1
10	LSU	15.1	2
11	Oregon	15.1	2
12	Georgia Tech	14.8	5
13	Penn State	12.5	2
14	Virginia Tech	12.0	10
15	Oklahoma State	11.5	3
16	Brigham Young	8.4	4
17	Houston	8.2	6
18	Pittsburgh	6.1	8
19	Utah	5.3	7
20	Ohio State	5.2	10
21	Texas Tech	4.9	5
22	West Virginia	3.1	4
23	South Carolina	3.0	2
24	Kansas	2.5	8
25	South Florida	1.9	6

Also Receiving Votes: Nebraska(1.4), Arizona(1.3), Oklahoma(1.1), Central Michigan(1.1), Notre Dame(1.0), Mississippi(0.7), Arkansas(0.6), Michigan(0.4), Wisconsin(0.4), California(0.4), Oregon State(0.3), Idaho(0.3), New Mexico(0.3), Auburn(0.3), Missouri(0.2), Boston College(0.1), Tulsa(0.1), Georgia(0.1), Arizona State(0.1), Wake Forest(0.0), Navy(0.0),

Total Ballots: 92

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

Alabama's lead in the race for #1 is now commanding after Florida's narrow escape from pig sooie. Iowa and Cincinnati crack the top five after VT slips up and Boise continues playing no one of note, as they will for the rest of the season. And carnage at the bottom of the poll sees Pitt and Utah debut in the top 20, with Texas Tech and WVU joining them towards the bottom.

The Blogpoll does manage to boot 3-3 Oklahoma, though they're #3 in others receiving votes.

Justify Your Existence

The AP finally came around to the idea of Alabama at #1, but the polls that count are hanging onto the Gators. This will be moot by the SEC championship game at the latest, but it bodes unwell for the decision-making processes the old guys with the ballots are undertaking. Incredibly, Florida has a 49-9 edge on Alabama in the Coaches' poll.

Other items of difference between the bloggers and the coaches:

Bloggers hate USC, Kansas, Ohio State, and Oklahoma State. All are three spots lower in this poll than they are in the coaches, with #7 USC the biggest difference of opinion in the top ten: the coaches have them #4.

Bloggers love Iowa, Oregon, and Texas Tech, all of whom are three spots higher in the blogpoll than in the coaches.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

No weird #1s, so on to the blips:

• Wait. Check that: New Mexico's only vote of any variety is a #1 from Smart Football . This is a "protest vote " because none of the top three teams were impressive. Stern glances.
• Elsewhere in blogosphere icons that draw ire, EDSBS has Notre Dame #13 , five spots higher than the next most enthusiastic voter.
• Two guys are still voting for Georgia .
• Husker Mike, who we'll see winning Mr. Bold a bit later, has Boise State #14, three spots lower than anyone else in the poll.
• This is a poll-wide deviancy, but why is anyone voting for Ole Miss higher than the last few slots? Ole Miss has one win over a BCS team, and that's Vandy. With two non-fluky losses, one of them to South Carolina, there's no way to justify them in the top 20, but no fewer than five bloggers have them in there, with Gate 21 , The Daily Gopher , and My Opinion On Sports all sticking a team that it should be clear was very overrated in the top 15.
• The Daily Gopher also sticks Mizzou in at #14. Don't do things just because Don Draper tells you to, TDG.
• Braves & Birds really likes Texas Tech: the Red Raiders are #9 , six spots higher than anyone else dares to place them.

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	Houston	3.8
2	Brigham Young	3.8
3	Ohio State	3.7
4	Utah	3.6
5	Texas Tech	3.4

All the Big 12 teams that filled this space last week lost, leaving the mid-majors with excellent wins but also humiliating losses in their rightful place. Ohio State's existence here is weird; not sure what people who have the Buckeyes any higher than their place in the poll are going on.

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	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		4.01
2	Braves and Birds	Georgia		3.27
3	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		3.10
4	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		3.08
5	Team Speed Kills	South Carolina		3.06

Husker Mike pulled an NCAA this week, crushing Boise State nine spots for Nebraska's loss to Texas Tech. Or something like this. Cornhuskers are all over the awards this week, and there's one obvious cause. Anyway: moving Boise down to #14 and keeping LSU afloat in the top five helps you win this award. As does only moving VT down four, putting Iowa all the way down at 12, and dumping South Carolina and Arkansas into nebulous "Oh God, what now?" section of the poll from 16-20.

But nothing tops this: Oklahoma #10, up a spot after losing a game to Texas to go 3-3. WTF?

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		0.81
2	The Only Colors	Michigan State		0.97
3	Oread Boom Kings	Kansas		1.08
4	Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician	Syracuse		1.26
5	The Wolverine Blog	Michigan		1.27

Margins dip alarmingly(!) as the state of Michigan asserts its dominance in dead-eyed complacency in the face of economic struggles. If only Michigan State had beaten UNC for the national title in basketball, this wouldn't have happened.

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	WVU Pressbox	West Virginia		6.89
2	Block U	Utah		4.74
3	Mountain West Connection	TCU		4.68
4	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		4.10
5	Team Speed Kills	South Carolina		4.00

The CK Award won straight up last week as USC extended its dominance over Notre Dame with a 34-27 victory, but a late surge by Clausen and an ugly interception from Matt Barkley turned 34-14 into the aforementioned final score and cost the CK Award the game against the points. It's now 5-2 both straight up and against the spread. Bonus points should be awarded, though, for 1) causing Charlie Weis to botch the late game clock management so badly that the game ended on third down and 2) causing the game to end in agony, putting another second on the clock, and causing it to end in agony again. Also, Nebraska took the pipe a week late.

Next up on the docket is surging West Virginia, though it's probably not too offensive to the foul gods of football arrogance that WVU Pressbox slotted the 'Eers in at #16. You can see in the poll at large that there's a huge cliff from the top 15 to the next batch, with over three points per ballot separating #15 Oklahoma State and #16 BYU. WVU is a touchdown favorite over UConn this weekend.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Oread Boom Kings	Kansas		-2.43
2	Corn Nation	Nebraska		-1.25
3	Double Extra Point	Nebraska		-1.25
4	Foul Balls	Notre Dame		-1.03
5	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-0.95

The margins here are so vaporous they might as well be nonexistent: the five blogs listed above all omitted their teams from their ballots, which makes total sense in the aftermath of a crushing loss to Texas Tech, going 3-3, and yet another loss to USC. One team that actually made the top 25 saw one of their fans underrate them, and that was #23 Kansas.

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	Corn Nation	Nebraska		164
2	Dan Shanoff	Florida		160
3	Oread Boom Kings	Kansas		158
4	Team Speed Kills	South Carolina		156
5	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		150

The numbers continue to come down here, with Corn Nation showing up a second time to win with a number that wouldn't have cracked the top five a couple weeks ago. The win is largely due to misplaced faith in Ohio State, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Ole Miss, all of whom take big tumbles after weekend losses.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	mgoblog	Michigan		72
2	The Ciskie Blog	Wisconsin		80
3	Fantasy College Blitz	Oklahoma State		80
4	Block C	Clemson		82
5	Frank Helps You	Tulane		84

Er. MGoBlog wins an award this week, so this is a little awkward. To clarify: I write MGoBlog with some help from others and this year I passed off the ballot to Tim just in case situations like this popped up. Providing meta-commentary on your own ballot is pretty weird. So meta-commentary on Tim's ballot: 72 is actually a very big number to win this category, so there's plenty of movement on the ballot: VT down ten, OSU down eight, etc.

Sometimes the winners here are just prescient and should have bet a lot of money on the weekend's games, and this appears to be the case here. Tim had already axed Oklahoma, was an OSU skeptic, had Nebraska slumming at #19, and had Kansas down at #23. So moving all those guys out cost less swing. One issue: Auburn down only three off a loss to Kentucky, that coming off an uncompetitive loss to Arkansas?

 

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Alabama (56)	24.4	0.7	--
2	Florida (40)	24.4	0.6	--
3	Texas (2)	22.6	1.8	--
4	Virginia Tech	21.2	1.8	1
5	Boise State	19.6	3.1	1
6	Southern Cal	18.9	2.5	2
7	Cincinnati	18.8	2.6	--
8	Miami (Florida)	16.4	2.7	1
9	Iowa	16.4	3.3	3
10	Ohio State	16.2	2.8	1
11	TCU	15.4	3.0	1
12	LSU	14.1	3.6	8
13	Oregon	13.1	3.2	--
14	Nebraska	10.4	3.5	4
15	Penn State	10.0	4.3	--
16	Kansas	8.5	4.4	1
17	Georgia Tech	8.5	3.6	2
18	Oklahoma State	8.2	3.9	2
19	South Florida	6.8	4.0	3
20	Brigham Young	6.6	3.6	1
21	South Carolina	5.2	2.9	5
22	Oklahoma	5.2	4.4	3
23	Houston	3.4	3.7	3
24	Auburn	2.0	2.8	10
25	Notre Dame	1.9	2.9	1

Also Receiving Votes: Pittsburgh(1.3), Utah(1.2), Wisconsin(1.1), Missouri(0.7), Mississippi(0.5), Arkansas(0.5), West Virginia(0.4), Central Michigan(0.3), Texas Tech(0.3), Arizona(0.1), Oregon State(0.1), Georgia(0.1), Stanford(0.1), Michigan(0.0), Tulsa(0.0), Idaho(0.0), UAB(0.0), Tennessee(0.0),

Total Ballots: 98

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

The Alabama-Florida war gets incredibly tight, with Alabama holding on to the top spot by less than a tenth of a point despite having a solid edge in first place votes. Elsewhere, LSU and Auburn take precipitous falls, Houston re-introduces itself with a third win over a BCS opponent, Iowa leaps Ohio State to become the top-ranked Big Ten team, and Notre Dame slips in at the end for what figures to be a brief appearance.

Justify Your Existence

The main thing remains the same: for the third straight week, the Blogpoll is the only poll to even consider the possibility that someone other than Florida is the top team in the country: UF gets 50 of 60 AP first-place votes and 53 of 59 coaches' first-place votes.

Other differences of note:

• The bottom end of the top ten is considerably different than the coaches, with Cincinnati, Miami, and Iowa up 2, 3, and 3 spots from the coaches poll. TCU, LSU, and Ohio State take dives of similar length.
• Bloggers have gotten over that Boise State game a lot faster, ranking Oregon #13. The coaches have them #16. Nebraska and GT are also up three spots.
• Taking the hit for those folks are Oklahoma State (down 4) and Oklahoma (down 4).

Wack Ballot Watchdog

There aren't a whole lot of massive oddities this week, but there are a few:

• Some wag no doubt wanting to taunt the AP poll slipped Idaho in at #25. Idaho is 5-1 but lost its only game against a BCS opponent 42-23 to Washington.
• Orange::44 actually moved Georgia up three spots to #20 after they got beat up by a giant catfish.
• Buckeye Commentary is the first voter to violate Boise-Oregon lockstep causality by placing Oregon #12 and Boise #17. Several other bloggers are hovering near that step and will probably take it the next time Oregon beats a quality opponent at the same time Boise is running it up on, well, Idaho.
• Saurian Sagacity has a couple of weird votes: USF #6 and USC #16 , each of those at least three points worth of outlier in the appropriate direction.
• Black Heart Gold Pants is enthusiastic about… Pittsburgh ? #14, four slots higher than any other voter? Okay.
• I don't get people hanging on to Ole Miss, which is five games into the season and has nothing but wins over Vandy and a couple of nonconference tomato cans to its credit. The most egregious hanger-on is Corn Nation , which still has the Rebels #14 .

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.

Highest stdev

#	Team	StdDev
1	Oklahoma	4.4
2	Kansas	4.4
3	Penn State	4.3
4	South Florida	4.0
5	Oklahoma State	3.9

Oklahoma, which still hasn't done anything but should be good, still takes the top spot here. See also: Kansas, Penn State.

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	Buckeye Commentary	Ohio State		3.62
2	The Tortilla Retort	Texas Tech		3.46
3	Gate 21	Tennessee		3.42
4	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		3.35
5	Dawg Sports	Georgia		3.27

The numbers here have fallen precipitously as the season has churned along and we finally have definitive answers on many teams: Ole Miss no, Iowa yes.The resume folk are still amongst us (SimonOnSports and Dawg Sports count themselves in that number) but are no longer sweeping the top spots.

This week the top spot goes to Buckeye Commentary , forcing me to remember my vow not to taunt Ohio State fans for as long as they can put a FOR SALE sign at Michigan Stadium. This is extremely difficult when 3-2 Oklahoma finds itself the #8 team in the country, up eight, and previously #10 Oklahoma State falls 13 places. Oklahoma beat Baylor by a lot. Oklahoma State squeezed by A&M. Did Buckeye Commentary confuse the two? Don't make fun. Be respectful. Don't make fun. Yes. Yes, it appears so. Why would you have either team in the top ten? I don't know. Sir.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	The Wolverine Blog	Michigan		1.01
2	WSU Football Blog	Washington State		1.18
3	We Will Always Have Tempe	Ohio State		1.25
4	The Bull Gator	Florida		1.26
5	The Only Colors	Michigan State		1.29

The numbers dip here, too, with The Wolverine Blog—a repeat winner—threatening to dip under 1.00 error. But we're still a ways from the Ballot of Perfect Boredom: The Wolverine Blog doesn't make it past #6 (Cincinnati) before hitting a difference.

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	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		9.07
2	Big Red Network	Nebraska		6.55
3	FNF Magazine: The Blog	South Florida		6.21
4	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		6.04
5	Fantasy College Blitz	Oklahoma State		5.78

For three quarters it looked like the CK Award would go a creepy 6-0 on the season (when measured against the spread). A torrential downpour shut down offenses, a last second fourth-and-goal conversion staked Missouri to a two-score lead, and no one was going anywhere. Then Blaine Gabbert threw two straight preposterous interceptions and Nebraska came roaring back. Curses. The award is now 5-1 on the year, and we have are answer to the question about the CK Award's ability to focus its rage: it does pretty well for two weeks but gets confused and wanders off just at the end.

Nebraska's poll surge has bounced many—though not all—of the enthusiastic Huskers out of the top five and leaves Notre Dame blog Subway Domer clear by more than two full points. Notre Dame, of course, has USC this week. The Trojans are favored by ten.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Gobbler Country	Virginia Tech		-2.15
2	Foul Balls	Notre Dame		-1.93
3	The Rakes of Mallow	Notre Dame		-1.93
4	The Ciskie Blog	Wisconsin		-1.08
5	Rock M Nation	Missouri		-0.71

With the nation's big early disappointments removed from either their latest wreckage or the polls themselves—I'm betting Georgia bloggers would have taken the opportunity to rank their team #121 of 120 if given the opportunity—the numbers here get very slim. Gobbler Country 's placement of VT #7, three slots below its final poll position, is your winner, with a couple of Notre Dame blogs that omitted the skin-of-their-teeth Irish from their ballots coming up just behind.

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		154
2	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		146
3	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		142
4	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		126
5	Team Speed Kills	South Carolina		120

If you're wondering how to win this award, try having Florida #20 and shooting the Gators all the way to #2 in the aftermath of their win against LSU, and then top that by having #25 Ohio State fly up to #13 and dropping #12 Georgia all the way out of the poll. Not that that last decision isn't justified, its just… why would you have Georgia #12 even before the events of Saturday?

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	My Opinion on Sports	Oklahoma		26
2	Big Red Network	Nebraska		36
3	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		42
4	The Tortilla Retort	Texas Tech		44
5	The Auburner	Auburn		44

Some of this is prescience: both Nebraska blogs already had the Huskers higher than the general population and didn't have to move them that far after they beat Missouri. But some of it's just plain stubborn: you winner here didn't move anyone in his top ten except to flip LSU and Ohio State (8 and 6 now, respectively) and dropping Mississippi six spots, inexplicably leaving a team that hasn't done anything at all this year #17.

The poll discourages looking at your old ballot when you're coming up with your new one because that encourages the sort of intertia you see in a lot of these ballots; overvaluing your opinion last week tends to undervalue actual on-field events.

 

Rank	Team	PPB	Delta
1	Alabama (50)	24.2	--
2	Florida (43)	23.8	--
3	Texas (4)	23.0	--
4	LSU	19.9	3
5	Virginia Tech	19.8	--
6	Boise State	19.7	2
7	Cincinnati	18.5	1
8	Southern Cal	18.2	--
9	Miami (Florida)	15.5	6
10	TCU	15.3	--
11	Ohio State	15.0	1
12	Iowa	14.4	1
13	Oregon	11.4	3
14	Auburn	10.3	9
15	Penn State	9.0	3
16	Oklahoma State	8.7	2
17	Kansas	8.0	2
18	Nebraska	5.7	3
19	Georgia Tech	5.4	7
20	Missouri	5.1	6
21	Brigham Young	5.0	1
22	South Florida	4.9	4
23	Mississippi	4.4	2
24	Wisconsin	3.9	2
25	Oklahoma	3.7	14

Also Receiving Votes: South Carolina(3.5), Houston(1.9), Georgia(1.8), Stanford(1.6), Notre Dame(1.1), Michigan(0.6), Arizona(0.5), West Virginia(0.3), Pittsburgh(0.2), Boston College(0.2), Utah(0.2), Connecticut(0.1), California(0.1), UCLA(0.1), Texas Tech(0.1), Central Michigan(0.0), UAB(0.0),

Total Ballots: 97

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

After a terribly exciting week in which the BlogPoll anointed a new #1 and generally demonstrated itself to be totally awesome relative to the actual polls that comprise the BCS, it's a bit of of a return to normalcy. This will be the theme of the rest of the year as games keep rolling in and your wiggle room to do something interesting evaporates.

This week the big movers are Miami (That Miami), which squeezed by Oklahoma and re-established its top-ten bonafides after the Virginia Tech embarrassment of a week ago, Auburn, which got a not-as-close-as-it-looked victory at Tennessee and has finally exorcised the stink of last year to pollsters, Georgia Tech, which won at Mississippi State, and Missouri, which did absolutely nothing but watched the back end of the poll implode whilst enjoying cheeseburgers.

Oklahoma is the most obvious faller but don't forget about poor Houston, which went from the top ten penthouse to gone after losing to UTEP by lots. Don't ask how or why. It just is. Georgia and Michigan also dropped out.

Justify Your Existence

Alabama, #3 everywhere else, is a tentative #1 here. They've got six first place votes total across the AP and Coaches' polls. Our one-week skepticism of LSU has been battered back into shape by Les Miles's ability to inexplicably pull his team out of the fire, but other major differences of opinion:

WE LIKE

• Alabama, obviously.
• Miami is #9 here, #11 in both other polls.
• Auburn is #13 here compared to #17 AP and #19 Coaches.
• GT is #19 here, #23/#22 elsewhere.

WE DON'T LIKE

• Oklahoma is #19 to the AP and #21 to the Coaches but is just barely hanging on to the last spot here.
• OSU (#11) meets considerably more skepticism here than in the other polls, where they're 8 and 9.
• Ole Miss is #23 here, #20 in the AP, and #16(!!!) in the Coaches' poll.

LOL WUT

• The coaches still have Penn State above Iowa.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

Oddities:

• I know we're getting to the point in the season where pure head-to-head isn't necessarily the best or only way to rank teams, but it seems hard to defend placing Oregon eight spots in front of a team (Boise State) that housed them on the opening weekend and has not lost, as Buckeye Commentary does.
• Two voters are still inexplicably going for Cal . I guess the Maryland win looks better this week, but come on.
• If you think #12 is low for Florida , you haven't seen anything yet: Tomahawk Nation puts UF #20, down 15 after a bye week and behind Michigan(!?).
• The Auburner allmost scales those same heights by placing LSU #20 .
• Arizona just picked up a nice win in Corvallis, but, um: BHGP ranks them #6 . It wasn't that nice.

And an omissions: where is South Carolina? Surely wins over NC State and Ole Miss plus a narrow, narrow loss to UGA is worth poll entry over Kansas or whoever.

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	Kansas	4.9
2	Oklahoma State	4.9
3	Nebraska	4.7
4	South Florida	4.6
5	Penn State	4.5

No one knows much about the Big 12. Here is a rant on that subject from War Blog Eagle that might explain things :

You’ll notice there are only two Big 12 teams in the ballot above. This is because the Big 12 is a joke.

Herewith, a comprehensive list of the entire conference’s nonconference victories to date, recalling that we have now entered the sixth week of the season: [long list of junk with Georgia, Wake Forest and Illinois the only BCS opponents therein] [Further list of B12 nonconference matchups that were not wins.]

Of course, here’s the catch: they lost every one of those games. Take the actual contenders for the top 25 in the Big 12–Texas, Oklahoma, Okie St., Texas Tech, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri–and they’re a combined 1-5 against legitimate nonconference opponents. (Southern Miss lost that designation when it slipped up against UAB, by the way.) 1-5 .

But I’m supposed to rank Kansas anyway, right, because they’re 4-0 and they’re Kansas? I’m supposed to rank Oklahoma anyway, because they’ve beaten Tulsa and Idaho St. and they’re Oklahoma?

Some people say yes. Others say not. Result: Big 12 mania atop this metric.

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		6.17
2	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		5.81
3	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		5.53
4	The Tortilla Retort	Texas Tech		4.24
5	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		4.10

Perhaps on the strength of that wack #20 vote for Florida, Tomahawk Nation eases into possession of Mr. Bold . Many, many weird votes, including: Miami #2, Iowa #3, South Carolina #10, Houston still #14, Texas #16, Michigan #19, the aforementioned Florida #20, and Ohio State #25. From your ballot to God's ears, TN.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician	Syracuse		1.40
2	The Only Colors	Michigan State		1.53
3	The Wolverine Blog	Michigan		1.56
4	Third Saturday in Blogtober	Alabama		1.60
5	Buffs.tv	Colorado		1.61

Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician 's long coverage of Syracuse athletics has finally netted it something of value: the week five, 2009, Mr. Numb Existence award. Next up: the International Bowl ?

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	Big Red Network	Nebraska		11.33
2	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		8.33
3	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		7.60
4	Braves and Birds	Georgia		7.25
5	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		6.93

Foul power of the CK Award update(!): Iowa managed to escape the true overpowering wrath of the double-headed god of bias, but only just. A Ricky Stanzi pick-six brought Arkansas State within ten and then the Red Wolves—why is it that teams that change their name from something offensively Indian, in this case the "Indians," always explicitly put red in their nicknames afterwards?—then drove for a sphincter-tightening touchdown to make it 24-21. They could not close the deal, perhaps because the CK Award was splitting its steely gaze between Nebraska (Nebraska blogs finished 1-2 last week with another Husker blogger in the #4 spot) and the Hawkeyes, who only finished third in last week's balloting but were thrust into the spotlight because of a Nebraska bye.

But they did easily beat the spread, bringing the CK Award to 6-0 on the season against Vegas and 5-1 straight up, with an undefeated Big Ten team's three point escape against a Sunbelt team the lone loss. Wrath and woe.

We'll never find out if the CK Award stores up hatred for later since Nebraska blogs take 1-2 again this week. That #4 guy must have got wise. Nebraska travels to Missouri to open Big 12 play; that line opened as a pick-em but has moved to Nebraska –3.

Oh, right: congratulations to the Big Red Network for pulling this in for a second consecutive week.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		-4.78
2	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-3.68
3	Gobbler Country	Virginia Tech		-1.78
4	Dawg Sports	Georgia		-1.75
5	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		-1.75

Saurian Sagacity, a dedicated resume-ranking blog that takes an extra dim view of cupcakin' it, often ends up here early in the season when their team of choice spends lots of its time cupcakin' it. And here they are, dropping Florida down to #7 after a bye week.

SIDE NOTE : they have Alabama and Auburn 1-2 at this juncture, which would make for a Football Armageddon to end all Football Armageddons. The entire state would devolve. The loser would have to leave. They'd pile them up in two square miles in the northwest corner of the State and build a big fence around it.

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	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		220
2	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		182
3	Dr. Saturday	Southern Miss		176
4	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		164
5	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		156

Wheeee! This award is still the realm of the dedicated resume-ranker, with the aforementioned Saurian Sagacity racking up 220 points worth of changes and easily outdistancing the pack. Auburn, Miami, Penn State, Michigan, and previous #2 Houston all see double-digit shifts and the only team to remain in the same spot is Alabama. That is tossing your ballot away and starting anew.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Clone Chronicles	Iowa State		60
2	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		60
3	Yet Another N.C. State Sports Blog	North Carolina State		62
4	Buffs.tv	Colorado		66
5	The Nittany Line	Penn State		66

On the other side of the ledger, this week we have a tie for Mr. Stubborn . Both ballots actually see a fair share of movement—60 is a big winning number here—but most of the ups and downs are in lockstep; no major shifts. Also Clone Chronicles still has Oklahoma #11, which what?

 

Rank	Team	PPB	Delta
1	Alabama (50)	24.2	1
2	Florida (48)	24.0	1
3	Texas (4)	22.9	--
4	Boise State	20.3	5
5	Virginia Tech	19.2	7
6	Cincinnati	18.2	4
7	LSU	18.0	1
8	Southern Cal	15.9	3
9	Houston	15.6	7
10	TCU	14.7	5
11	Oklahoma	14.4	2
12	Ohio State	14.1	2
13	Iowa	13.8	13
14	Oklahoma State	9.5	4
15	Miami (Florida)	8.7	8
16	Oregon	7.8	10
17	Georgia	7.7	4
18	Penn State	7.6	13
19	Kansas	6.8	1
20	Michigan	5.9	1
21	Nebraska	4.3	5
22	Brigham Young	4.2	1
23	Auburn	4.1	3
24	California	3.8	20
25	Mississippi	3.6	17

Also Receiving Votes: Missouri(3.6), Georgia Tech(3.2), South Florida(2.5), UCLA(2.3), South Carolina(2.2), Wisconsin(0.7), Notre Dame(0.4), Utah(0.2), Arizona(0.1), North Carolina(0.1), Stanford(0.1), Florida State(0.1), North Carolina State(0.1), Pittsburgh(0.1), Connecticut(0.0), Texas Tech(0.0), Minnesota(0.0), Texas A&M(0.0),

Total Ballots: 102

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

Hello! There's a new #1 in town : Alabama, which authoritatively dismissed Arkansas and got a big boost from Virginia Tech demolishing previously top-ten story of the season Miami (That Miami). Alabama's got way more oomph in its early season schedule than anyone else and narrowly overcomes poll momentum to grab the top spot away from Florida. In the long run it won't mean a whole lot since undefeated (or, honestly, one-loss) versions of either Florida or Alabama are virtually guaranteed to get into the BCS Championship Game after beating the other in the SEC version of same, but it is nice to see that people are paying attention. About which more later.

Elsewhere, a wide variety of top ten teams get hammered for disappointing performance. Cal takes what I believe is a record 20-spot drop after losing to Oregon 42-3; Mississippi just barely stays in the poll at #25 after losing in ugly fashion to South Carolina, Penn State drops 13 spots after an only vaguely competitive game against Iowa, and Miami (That Miami) suffered the aforementioned beating at the hands of Virginia Tech. Miami's wins over Florida State and Georgia Tech give them some staying power; they drop only eight slots.

Justify Your Existence

It might be time for the Harris and Coaches' Polls to start justifying their existences. I noted this on my home blog and it's worth repeating here: the list of grievances presented by Doctor Saturday a month into the season is compelling. Here's a brief dossier of the inanities currently featured in the polls that determine BCS eligibility and national championship game entry:

A month into the season, is it too much to ask the AP , coaches and Harris polls reflect the slightest shred of common sense?

• LSU is No. 4. Because ... ?

• Oklahoma is No. 8. Because ... ?

• The coaches rank Oklahoma State ahead of Houston.

• The coaches and Harris polls rank Penn State ahead of Iowa.

• The coaches and Harris rank Cal ahead of Oregon.

• All three polls rank Ole Miss ahead of South Carolina.

Each of these has explanation over at DocSat, though in many cases the explanation could be "duh." The blogpoll is far from perfect but the ever-expanding cadre of voters who are basing their ballots strictly on what's gone on between the sidelines—something the poll guidelines suggest should be implemented by week five and demand by week eight—makes for a poll that escapes most of those inanities . You could argue LSU and Oklahoma are still too high but they are considerably lower than they are in the Harris/Coaches' polls. Houston, Oregon and Iowa are ahead of the teams they beat handily. Ole Miss is still ahead of South Carolina, unfortunately, but the inertia in the BlogPoll is far less; Ole Miss is still #18 in the Coaches' Poll but is down to #25 here, and was totally out of the Monday draft version of the thing.

And then there's

Wack Ballot Watchdog

We're finally done with strange #1 votes, so just the weirdos, ma'am:

• Block C saw 42-3 and only dropped Cal four spots , which leaves them six spots higher than they are on the next most-enthusiastic voter's ballot.
• The Tortilla Retort is the only voter of 102 to go for 2-2 Florida State , and FSU gets placed #14(!).
• I don't get Iowa's vote distribution at all, with plenty of voters not even permitting the Hawkeyes entry into the top 20. Okay, close shave against a I-AA team. They've moved past it.
• Similarly, LSU's voting patterns are inexplicable, especially the guy who voted them #2 .
• Our new FO voter—Syracuse guy—has Ohio State #4 , five spots ahead of #9 USC.
• Falcon Nation  has Oklahoma State #5 !?
• Bruce Ciskie  has VT #21, actually dropping them a spot after they murdered Miami. Next lowest vote is #14.

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	Oklahoma	5.8
2	Oregon	5.5
3	Auburn	5.4
4	Iowa	5.2
5	Kansas	5.2

Oooh: a rare instance where mid-major teams do not so much as make an appearance. Oklahoma, possessors of wins over nobody and a loss to a BYU team that was subsequently run off its own field by Florida State, which was subsequently run off the field by a South Florida team without longtime starting quarterback Matt Groethe, is a matter of some debate. Of course it is.

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	Dr. Saturday	Southern Miss		6.28
2	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		5.98
3	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		5.89
4	The Tortilla Retort	Texas Tech		5.70
5	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		5.33

Dr. Saturday reclaims its God-given spot at the top of the Mr. Bold rankings with his dedicated resume-ranking, though you can see the margin and average error dipping as the rest of the poll begins to come around to the idea that onfield results are the only thing that matter after a certain point.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Bama Sports Report	Alabama		1.64
2	Beat Visitor	Rutgers		1.69
3	A Sea of Blue	Kentucky		1.82
4	CollegeGameBalls	Virginia Tech		1.84
5	Hail to the Orange	Illinois		1.88

Mr. Numb Existence goes to Alabama blog Bama Sports Report , which yes does agree that Alabama should be #1, thank you. We're still a ways off from the point when a hypothetical exact ballot can be submitted, and BSR's 1.64 winning error is actually pretty high. Give it time.

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	Big Red Network	Nebraska		11.68
2	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		10.68
3	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		8.25
4	Corn Nation	Nebraska		7.68
5	BCS Guru	UCLA		7.66

Holy hotpants. The CK Award is now 4-0 straight up and against the spread after crushing Florida State for the second time this year. FSU was a two-touchdown favorite over the Groethe-less Bulls. I have been warned never to suggest the CK Award's power is anything other than absolute.

So, Nebraska, you're totally screwed for this week's game against… nobody. What? Is this a plot to break the foul streak? Nebraska blogs had better explain :

Nebraska in the Top 10? I decided this on Saturday night after I returned home from the game and witnessed the carnage in the Top 25. I keep hearing today how if Nebraska had beaten VT they'd be in the top ten. Why not put them there, then? Nobody who watched it came away thinking NU and VT were anything less than equal. The huge jump has nothing to do with the game against Louisiana and a lot to do with the way Tech handled Miami, but here's the other factor: Nebraska hasn't played poorly yet. That's something Oklahoma, USC, Oregon, Cal, Iowa, BYU, LSU, or Oklahoma State--all teams ranked ahead of the Huskers in either the coaches or AP poll--can't say and consistency has to count for something. The Huskers haven't faced a truly explosive offense yet, but they'll see plenty of them in the Big 12.

Oh. Well… that's not totally insane. It's still pretty freakin' insane, because Nebraska may not have "played poorly" yet but they lost to VT and their other three games have been against Florida Atlantic, Arkansas State, and Louisiana Lafayette. "Consistency" can count for something, but probably not more than beating Penn State on the road at night, one-point win over a I-AA team be damned.

Speaking of, I guess the whammy might fall to Iowa this week, as an enthusiastic Black Heart Gold Pants throws the Hawkeyes all the way up to #4. I actually think that's justified since few other teams can claim easy victories over three BCS schools, or two BCS schools and Iowa State. Iowa's got… argh… Arkansas State this weekend. They're a three-touchdown favorite.

As for Nebraska, I don't know how the CK Award will react. Will it save up its righteous fury for a week and unleash it in the Huskers' Big Twelve opener against Missouri? Or will it wander off like a confused puppy to gnaw (OF DOOM!) on whichever sap team wins it next week? Stay tuned.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		-7.70
2	The Nittany Line	Penn State		-7.57
3	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-7.39
4	The Lions Den	Penn State		-4.57
5	California Golden Blogs	California		-3.76

Georgia's getting impressive staying power here off their early-season loss to Oklahoma State, with Doug Gillett of Hey Jenny Slater remaining the poll's most pessimistic fellow about his chosen team. The rest of the top five is pretty obvious, with Penn State fans overreacting to their fall from grace and Cal fans… well… Cal fans are potentially justified in leaving the Bears off their ballots entirely.

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	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		256
2	Dr. Saturday	Southern Miss		254
3	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		250
4	From Old Virginia	Virginia		242
5	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		226

Wheeeee it's resume folk at the top here as per usual, with CK Award sorta-winner Black Heart Gold Pants narrowly edging Doctor Saturday . This category will get more interesting in a few weeks.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Roll Bama Roll	Alabama		26
2	Let's Go Rockets	Toledo		78
3	Block C	Clemson		90
4	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		102
5	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		106

Roll Bama Roll is not psychic—if you look at last week's ballot it looks suspiciously like a ballot that someone might submit this week, they're just prompt. They submitted a ballot first this week and were thus the only blog to run across an error on my part that hadn't moved the voting week ahead. So they are not the possessors of this week's Mr. Stubborn , but we will offer them the first-ever Lightnin' Hopkins Fastest Ballot award.

The actual Mr. Stubborn goes to Toledo blog Let's Go Rockets , which surveyed the carnage last weekend and said "maybe if I vote like a coach I'll get hired somewhere": Penn State drops only seven to #11 and remains six spots in front of Iowa. Miami, which LGR was already skeptical of, drops five spots to #24. Ole Miss and Cal only drop seven spots and Oregon doesn't even get on the ballot. I give this ballot a cocked eyebrow.

 

Rank	Team	PPB	Delta
1	Florida (69)	23.9	--
2	Alabama (20)	23.5	2
3	Texas (4)	23.0	--
4	California	20.6	2
5	Penn State	19.0	--
6	LSU	18.3	4
7	Miami (Florida) (8)	17.8	10
8	Mississippi	17.6	--
9	Boise State	17.3	--
10	Cincinnati (1)	14.1	6
11	Southern Cal	13.6	9
12	Virginia Tech	13.1	2
13	Oklahoma	12.5	--
14	Ohio State	11.8	2
15	TCU	10.2	--
16	Houston	7.7	5
17	Florida State	6.7	9
18	Oklahoma State	6.6	--
19	Michigan	5.7	6
20	Kansas	5.6	3
21	Georgia	5.4	1
22	North Carolina	5.2	2
23	Brigham Young	4.5	16
24	Missouri	3.2	2
25	Washington	3.2	1

Also Receiving Votes: Auburn(2.7), UCLA(2.3), Nebraska(2.2), Georgia Tech(1.8), Iowa(1.4), Pittsburgh(1.4), Notre Dame(0.6), Oregon(0.6), Clemson(0.4), Texas Tech(0.3), Oregon State(0.3), Arizona State(0.2), Kentucky(0.2), Utah(0.2), Southern Miss(0.1), Wisconsin(0.1), Colorado State(0.1), West Virginia(0.1), South Florida(0.1), Central Michigan(0.0), South Carolina(0.0), Texas A&M(0.0),

Total Ballots: 102

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

Miami's thumping win over Georgia Tech and Florida State's housing of BYU sends both ACC teams shooting up the poll and actually garners the 'Canes eight first place votes and a spot in the top ten ahead of Ole Miss, inviting the question "why aren't they ahead of LSU and Penn State?" but whatever. At the top, Florida's grip on first place votes continues to weaken, with about 30 percent of them headed to other teams in the poll, most prominently #2 Alabama.

Also note Houston's inexplicable leap a week after they smoked Oklahoma State. The Cougars took on mighty BYE this weekend, so the only explanation is that voters felt bad about ranking the 'Pokes above them and reconsidered.

Justify Your Existence

Differences between the blogpoll and the AP are getting wider as the resume folks become more prevalent deeper into the season:

• Blogpoll folks are far more likely to spread first place votes around at this point in the season. Florida has more than 90% of the AP first place votes and less than 70% of Blogpoll first place votes.
• Alabama is #2 here instead of Texas.
• Houston—get this—is ahead of Oklahoma State.
• Bloggers hate Ole Miss, which is #8 here and #4 in the AP, BYU (23 here, 19 there), and Oklahoma (#13 vs #10) .
• They love Cal (#4 vs #6), Miami (#7 vs #9), Cincinnati (#10 vs #14), Michigan (#19 vs #23… gulp) and Missouri (#24 vs UR).

Most of the other hate consists of one-pip drops to make room for the folks they love; this week's ballot is significant different from the AP, and more reflective of results to date. You know, when you put the resume guys together with a bunch of more conventional voters the results tend to look better.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

Utah's loss thankfully spares us the blemish of that particular #1 vote. Now the weirdest one out there is Cincinnati's #1, which is from the margin of victory enthusiasts at Black Heart Gold Pants . And that's not so bizarre as the Bearcats also pick up a couple #2s and a couple #3s.

I'm not going to get on anyone's case about their relative placement of BYU and Oklahoma since OU lost by a point with its starting quarterback out and BYU got hammered by Florida State. You parse that out however you want. But I do think it's impossible to look at Florida State's resume and find it wanting compared to Oklahoma. I know we're early in the season but uh… apparently everyone… how does ranking Oklahoma #6 and Florida State not at all work? Or OU #6 and FSU #21 ? Or a thousand other ballots that have similar distributions?

Why is anyone voting for Oregon ? They're a thousand return touchdowns away from 0-3 (their QB was 4 for 16 against Utah, and they won!). Their wins are by two points over a Big Ten team that everyone expects will be terrible and just lost to NIU and a Utah team that graduated most of the team that finished #2 last year. They've also gotten embarrassed by Boise.

Ditto Oregon State , which has a two-point win against UNLV to its credit and a ten-point loss to Cincinnati.

And this will get discussed a bit later, but the week's weirdest, most indefensible vote is Arizona State #7 from Rocky Top Talk . I know they use a computer system for a draft ballot, but the reason computer systems can't participate in the poll is they do things like rank Arizona State #7 after wins against a I-AA team and ULM. RTT's supposed to curate that thing.

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	Houston	5.5
2	Mississippi	5.3
3	Penn State	5.2
4	Auburn	5.1
5	Cincinnati	5.0

No surprise here that a mid-major with one hot win finds itself atop these rankings; it is how it always is. More interesting are the two teams following Houston: Ole Miss and Penn State are both in the top ten, a place that only rarely finds its way into this table, but have played no one so far and looked meh doing so.

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	Addicted to Quack	Oregon		7.33
2	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		6.87
3	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		6.54
4	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		6.46
5	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		6.21

Doctor Saturday misses out on this category for the first time this year, but it's not for lack of trying. Auburn finds itself #2 on his latest ballot, one spot in front of #3 Alabama. A subpoena is on its way. But that and other oddities were overwhelmed by five separate blogs cracking 6.0 average error, an unprecedented number this far into the season. Things should be calming down now. But no.

Your winner is the appropriated-named Addicted To Quack. Some ballot anomalies outside of what looks like a heavily resume-based ballot :

• LSU flies up to #4, I guess because early victim Washington (now #7) beat USC.
• Houston is stuck in at #6, up three despite the bye.
• Texas, Florida, Penn State, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Ohio State all tumble precipitously.

Looks like this ballot switched from projection to pure resume this week.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	The Wolverine Blog	Michigan		1.48
2	Testudo Times	Maryland		1.62
3	Fantasy College Blitz	Oklahoma State		1.65
4	SportsFrog	Central Michigan		1.65
5	Rock M Nation	Missouri		1.69

The Wolverine Blog defends its Mr. Numb Existence title, which is odd. This thing is notoriously difficult to hold onto, especially when you've got unpredictable resume folk out there early. The rest of the top five is new, but Ace manages to peg the overall poll closer than anyone for the second straight week. He's inside our collective heads. Quick, someone ask him if Erin Andrews is attractive!

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	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		7.30
2	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		7.27
3	Husker Mike's Blasphemy	Nebraska		6.78
4	Mizzourah	Missouri		6.75
5	BCS Guru	UCLA		6.73

The foul CK Award claimed a third victim in three weeks, sending Arkansas down in a fevered shootout against Georgia. Painful: the Hogs led 21-0 and lost by 10. Do not tempt its wrath. The award is now 3-0 on the season both straight up against the spread.

In all likelihood this comes to an end this week. Thanks to Tomahawk Nation tempting fate for a second time this year, Florida State is under the evil eye. They get what looked like a potentially interesting game against Matt Grothe and South Florida, and then Grothe had to go out and get injured. The line stands at FSU –14.5 right now, so it'll be a hard slog for the CK Award this week straight up. Second-place finisher Auburn—which just escaped the whammy when that late DocSat ballot came in—gets horrible Ball State, so both teams picked a good week to flaunt the vote.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		-6.90
2	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		-5.38
3	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-4.53
4	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		-3.71
5	California Golden Blogs	California		-2.60

Still no surprise here, as dedicated resume voter Saurian Sagacity looks at Florida's schedule and finds it meh so far. Margin of victory here is way down after a win over an SEC team, but it's still a margin of victory. Further down the list, Georgia and Oklahoma voters are still scarred from the opening week, Michigan fans are still scarred from 2009, and Cal fans are still scarred from being tied against Minnesota briefly.

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	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		302
2	Black Heart Gold Pants	Iowa		284
3	Addicted to Quack	Oregon		280
4	Dr. Saturday	Southern Miss		226
5	FNF Magazine: The Blog	South Florida		220

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! This is epic, epic swing all over the place. The Addicted to Quack ballot we saw seesawing all over the place in Mr. Bold doesn't win—doesn't even finish second—because Rocky Top Talk and Black Heart Gold Pants got even dizzier. RTT has got to be pushing near the theoretical maximum swing that doesn't occur in week one and isn't specifically generated to win the award: only four teams don't move at all and 14 teams move at least nine spots, with Miami (That Miami) shooting from unranked to #4 and Arizona State(!?!?) leaping from unranked to #7.

Arizona State beat ULM last weekend. What?

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	The Daily Gopher	Minnesota		58
2	Big Red Network	Nebraska		60
3	The Nittany Line	Penn State		62
4	Gate 21	Tennessee		64
5	Mizzourah	Missouri		66

This is a bit of a relief after that last category. The Daily Gopher is your Mr. Stubborn victor for being kind to USC (down only 6), skeptical of the big ACC movers (Miami up only 4, Florida State not in the poll) and moving up everyone else in virtual lockstep. A very, very boring ballot.

 

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Florida (85)	24.4	2.1	--
2	Southern Cal (13)	23.3	1.4	1
3	Texas	22.9	2.1	1
4	Alabama (4)	22.3	1.6	--
5	Penn State	19.4	2.7	1
6	California	19.1	2.1	1
7	Brigham Young	18.4	2.6	2
8	Mississippi	17.0	3.7	--
9	Boise State	16.2	3.4	3
10	LSU	15.5	4.1	1
11	Georgia Tech	12.6	4.3	3
12	Ohio State	12.5	4.1	2
13	Oklahoma	12.2	4.3	--
14	Virginia Tech	11.2	4.5	1
15	TCU	10.2	4.1	1
16	Cincinnati (1)	8.6	5.2	6
17	Miami (Florida)	7.0	4.7	--
18	Oklahoma State	6.6	4.0	14
19	Nebraska	6.6	4.3	5
20	Utah (1)	6.3	5.4	1
21	Houston	5.3	5.8	5
22	Georgia	4.1	3.7	2
23	Kansas	4.0	3.8	2
24	North Carolina	3.5	3.6	3
25	Michigan	3.2	3.8	1

Also Receiving Votes: Missouri(3.0), Oregon State(1.7), UCLA(1.4), Pittsburgh(1.3), Texas Tech(1.0), Baylor(0.7), Iowa(0.6), Notre Dame(0.6), West Virginia(0.5), Auburn(0.4), Arkansas(0.3), Clemson(0.3), Boston College(0.3), Florida State(0.2), Southern Miss(0.2), Oregon(0.1), Minnesota(0.1), Central Michigan(0.1), Kentucky(0.1), South Florida(0.0), Tulsa(0.0), Colorado State(0.0), Wisconsin(0.0), Arizona(0.0), South Carolina(0.0),

Total Ballots: 104

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

The dissent on Florida grows as the season moves along and other teams pick up wins against actual opponents; Blogpoll voters, probably because they are mostly fans (also because they have been instructed to), get huffy about a bunch of boring games against tomato cans. The poll does not take the wistfully logical step of placing Houston (#21) above Oklahoma State (#18), as it's done strongly for BYU, for no other reason than Houston entering the season with a lower national profile. Oklahoma State, after all, didn't lose its starting quarterback and ended up losing by ten, not one. That disparity is hard to figure.

Elsewhere, Oklahoma State drops precipitously, Houston makes its all-time Blogpoll debut, Ohio State is treated with relative kindness, and the back end of the poll falls out, including Notre Dame

Justify Your Existence

We're now splitting out meaningful differences between the Blogpoll and the AP into its own section. Which is this section. With two weeks gone and bloggers considerably more inclined to toss away preconceived notions, there are some significant gaps:

• USC moves up to #2 after their win at Ohio State; neither other poll has the chutzpah to move the Trojans past Texas and their opening victories over nobody.
• Bloggers are hating more on teams that have underperformed to start the year: #8 Ole Miss is 5/6 in the other polls. Oklahoma State dropped a full 14 spots in the aftermath of their loss to Houston, settling in at #18, two spots lower than they are in the AP. And despite one nut ranking Utah #1, the Utes are #20 instead of #18.
• The love goes to Cal, #6 here and #8 elsewhere, Georgia Tech, #11 here and #13 elsewhere, and Miami (That Miami), #17 here and #20 elsewhere.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

• Weird #1s: Cincinnati from BHGP, which is submitting weird resume ballots early, and Utah from The Lion's Den for no apparent reason. The Utes just beat San Jose State by 10 after USC enclubberated them, so now we have some evidence. Petulant anti-BCS vote? Note: we are not part of the BCS.
• Maize 'n' Brew  hates them some mid-majors: Houston is #23, BYU #16, and both of the teams they beat are well ahead of them. This is the other extreme from resume voters, eh?
• Man… everything else I click on when I go to the team grid is just resume-ranking or vaguely defensible. Although I wonder why anyone's voting for Oregon , which may have beat Purdue but by two points and thanks to two fumble returns.

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.

Highest stdev

#	Team	StdDev
1	Houston	5.8
2	Utah	5.4
3	Cincinnati	5.2
4	Miami (Florida)	4.7
5	Virginia Tech	4.5

Mid-majors are resurgent here as voters try to figure out what to do with a CUSA that took out Oklahoma State. note Cincinnati's presence; they've been beating teams about as good as the ones Florida is beating about as badly. "But they aren't Florida," says one group, and another group says "you don't know that."

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		8.38
2	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		8.14
3	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		7.86
4	The Rakes of Mallow	Notre Dame		4.78
5	Eagle in Atlanta	Boston College		4.30

Last week I spiked the Black Heart Gold Pants's ballot for being beyond resume voting (you can read their reaction to that here ; they're awesomely thrilled about it), as they just threw out literally every assumption in the book and went strictly by margin of victory, something they're still pretty much doing but a week into the season the results descend into the realm of vague plausibility and, like… okay. I give up.

Later in the season I'll probably complain about the ballots that finish high up here because they'll contain some ideas indefensible given results on the field but at this point, sure, Cincinnati could be the greatest team in the world (rock). So here we are.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	The Wolverine Blog	Michigan		1.25
2	Orange::44	Syracuse		1.44
3	Block C	Clemson		1.49
4	Over the Pylon	Ball State		1.49
5	WSU Football Blog	Washington State		1.54

The Wolverine Blog is the winner here, and after last week? All three of Michigan's primary rivals lost and Michigan made one of them do so in spectacular fashion, and TWB feels nuffink. Meanwhile, look at the rest of the list, full of the perpetually moribund (Syracuse, WSU), perpetually mediocre (Clemson, coming off a loss to GT), and one of this year's great craters (Ball State). One of these things is not like the other.

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	RazorBloggers	Arkansas		7.72
2	Fantasy College Blitz	Oklahoma State		6.38
3	Buckeye Commentary	Ohio State		5.52
4	Mizzourah	Missouri		5.05
5	The Smoking Musket	West Virginia		4.55

The dark power of the CK Award never ceases to amaze: Notre Dame was a strong winner last year and was on pace to hit the spread until Tate Forcier threw a touchdown pass to Greg Mathews on a circle route, sending Notre Dame to heart-crushing defeat and the CK Award to 2-0 on the season both straight up and against the spread.

This week the whammy falls on wooo pig sooey Arkansas, as the RazorBloggers are holding steady at #18 for their team of choice while almost everyone else ignores them. Not a good week to screw around with the foul gods of bias, either: Arkansas gets Georgia this week. However, Georgia 1) lost to a team that lost to Houston and 2) managed to beat South Carolina despite getting outgained badly. So maybe it's not all bad. Arkansas is currently a one-point favorite. Prepare to lose when Uga—the dog—forces a fumble late in the fourth quarter, Arkansas fans.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		-12.38
2	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-12.22
3	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		-4.06
4	Dan Shanoff	Florida		-2.38
5	Michigan Sports Center	Michigan		-2.22

Saurian Sagacity manages to wrest the title from Tilting At Windmills , which is still smarting from that BYU game and sees no reason to change after OU decked a I-AA team, mostly because it's a pure resume voter and Florida hasn't played anyone yet. Early season, man.

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	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		188
2	Oread Boom Kings	Kansas		162
3	Barking Carnival	Texas		150
4	Foul Balls	Notre Dame		150
5	The Ralphie Report	Colorado		142

Early in the season this tends to be the domain of the pure resume guy as a ton more information comes in every week and previous non-assumptions must be hastily remade into assumptions. And this is the case here, with dedicated resume guy SOS wildly rejiggering in the wake of week two. (Alliteration for the win.) Just check that ballot out: USC rockets to #1! Houston up 22 spots to #4! UCLA, Georgia Tech, and Michigan into the top ten! Weeeeeeee!

This will calm down as the season goes along. At least, I assume so.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	My Opinion on Sports	Oklahoma		28
2	The Lions Den	Penn State		34
3	Big Red Network	Nebraska		42
4	Mizzourah	Missouri		48
5	Hammer & Rails	Purdue		48

Conversely, as the season progresses this award often goes to voters whose ballots were prescient in some way. Right now it's usually serious stubbornness, however. MOOS wins for a combo of both: Notre Dame wasn't on it and Michigan State was only #23, but the twin OSUs only dip a total of ten spots and the only way for anyone to move anywhere in his poll is to leap one of the few fallers.

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Florida (92)	24.5	2.7	--
2	Texas	23.2	2.7	--
3	Southern Cal (2)	22.4	2.1	--
4	Alabama (5)	22.3	1.4	1
5	Oklahoma State	20.0	2.0	5
6	Penn State	18.7	3.1	1
7	California	17.7	2.6	5
8	Mississippi	16.9	3.1	3
9	Brigham Young (1)	15.5	4.0	11
10	Ohio State	14.8	4.3	4
11	LSU	14.7	4.4	3
12	Boise State	14.5	4.1	3
13	Oklahoma	11.8	4.1	9
14	Georgia Tech	11.5	4.4	--
15	Virginia Tech	10.2	4.6	6
16	TCU	8.1	4.1	1
17	Miami (Florida)	6.5	5.3	8
18	Notre Dame	6.2	5.2	6
19	Utah (1)	5.7	5.0	1
20	Georgia	5.6	4.0	7
21	North Carolina	5.3	4.1	--
22	Cincinnati	4.7	4.7	4
23	Nebraska	4.6	3.4	--
24	Missouri	3.8	5.1	2
25	Kansas	2.9	3.1	1

Also Receiving Votes: Oregon State(2.1), Michigan State(1.7), Florida State(1.6), Clemson(1.3), Pittsburgh(0.8), Baylor(0.7), Oregon(0.7), Texas Tech(0.6), Iowa(0.5), Arkansas(0.3), South Carolina(0.3), Michigan(0.3), Tennessee(0.3), South Florida(0.2), Colorado State(0.2), UCLA(0.2), Arizona(0.1), Auburn(0.1), Southern Miss(0.1), West Virginia(0.1), Bowling Green(0.1), Northwestern(0.1), Miami (Ohio)(0.1), East Carolina(0.0), Stanford(0.0), Texas A&M(0.0), Navy(0.0), Air Force(0.0), North Carolina State(0.0), Houston(0.0), Wisconsin(0.0), Kentucky(0.0), UAB(0.0), Tulsa(0.0),

Total Ballots: 101

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

Ah, welcome to the week one Blogpoll, when no one can decide just what the hell they're supposed to be doing. Some people make adjustments to their preseason ballot. Some people throw it away entirely . And some people regard their ballot as an exercise in epistemology by ranking the entirety of D-I based on nothing more than first-week victory margin, thus throwing your poll editor into a tailspin of philosophical agony over spiking the thing. It's a stunt ballot, but two other ballots are in striking distance in Mr. Bold. It maintains internal consistency. It's dumb. It's modern art, or something. I bet this never happens in the basketball poll.

Anyway… yes, spiked. It's kind of smug to make some sort of point about how no one really knows anything after week one, isn't it? It's doubly so when the poll doesn't require anyone to submit a ballot until after week three. Maybe you're taking the polling thing a little too seriously if you can't just wait, Che. No stunt ballots. (DocSat ballots and other pure resume ballots are not stunt ballots, they're deeply neurotic ballots.)

The poll itself features a couple of relatively large AP gaps this week, possibly because of all the nuts:

• Bloggers love: Cal (7th instead of 10th), Miami (17th instead of 20th).
• Bloggers hate: many teams very slightly: PSU, OSU, Mississippi, etc.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

I get moving your first place ballot to someone else after Florida took on the fightin' Chesneys in their opener, but… Utah? That's the sage decision of The Lion's Den for reasons unknown. I'm sure the BYU vote is some resume guy or another. This feature will get ramped up more over the next couple weeks as there's more hard evidence to dispute fancy notions. A quick scan of Oregon's votes shows no one with Boise State under them, so that's good… and that's about the only thing we can say at this point since the BYU game was a nail-biter in which OU played without that Heisman guy.

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	Miami (Florida)	5.3
2	Notre Dame	5.2
3	Missouri	5.1
4	Utah	5.0
5	Cincinnati	4.7

Mid-majors are surprisingly almost excised from the most controversial teams in the poll, and Miami takes the crown for good reason. Every year after the FSU-Miami game we have to figure out whether the winner is legit or not; recently the answer has been "not."

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	Dr. Saturday	Southern Miss		8.95
2	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		7.09
3	Bleed Scarlet	Rutgers		4.71
4	Dan Shanoff	Florida		4.50
5	The Rakes of Mallow	Notre Dame		4.23

The aforementioned Che ballot is this week's nominal Mr. Bold winner, but amongst the non-spiked ballots it's now-traditional week one victor Doctor Saturday, who is one of those guys—the foremost guy, in fact—who discards the preseason ballot wholly for stuff that happened in week one. This results in oddities like BYU #2, Boise #4, and Texas and Florida (DocSat's preseason 1 and 2) unranked.

I still disagree with this sort of balloting but I've given up trying to change anyone's minds.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	SOX & Dawgs	Connecticut		1.34
2	Block C	Clemson		1.40
3	Block U	Utah		1.49
4	NittanyWhiteOut	Penn State		1.56
5	The Only Colors	Michigan State		1.61

New UConn blog Sox & Dawgs is your Mr. Numb Existence winner. This early no one gets an exact ballot , but Sox and Dawgs is pretty close this week. Also note that having the word "Block" in your blog name turns you into a lifeless shell incapable of feeling anything.

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	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		8.78
2	RazorBloggers	Arkansas		7.65
3	Mountain West Connection	TCU		5.86
4	Anton Azucar	Miami (Florida)		5.48
5	Double Extra Point	Nebraska		5.36

All right .

The CK Award continued its reign of terror by condemning by-the-numbers week one winner Tomahawk Nation , which shot Florida State way high in a preseason ballot that was based solely on schedule strength, to suffer humiliating defeat at the hands of an arch-rival. (Last week's blogpoll actually skipped over that in favor of ND blog Rakes of Mallow , which actually expressed opinions about teams in his poll; the CK Award has let it be known that the numbers are not to be defied.) By the numbers, the award is 1-0 against the spread and straight up.

This week your winner is Subway Domer, which places Notre Dame #11, almost nine points higher than poll consensus. Notre Dame plays Michigan this week; they're favored by about three. Mwa ha ha.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Tilting at WindMills	Oklahoma		-11.83
2	Dawg Sports	Georgia		-5.62
3	Hey Jenny Slater	Georgia		-5.62
4	CollegeGameBalls	Virginia Tech		-4.20
5	And The Valley Shook!	LSU		-3.67

Wow. One of the blogpoll's finest traditions is downvoting your team spectacularly after a disappointing loss, and indeed the top four in this category are all bloggers supporting teams that lost disappointingly in week one action. And though the fifth didn't lose they did get Life on the Margins-ed. New Oklahoma blog Tilting at Windmills  is just going to, like, die it's life is totally over . Accordingly, it ranks the Sooners… well… not at all.

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	Dr. Saturday	Southern Miss		418
2	SimonOnSports	Connecticut		310
3	The Rakes of Mallow	Notre Dame		222
4	One Bronco Nation Under God	Boise State		204
5	mgoblog	Michigan		200

Ah, first-week swing, the province of dedicated resume-rankers like now-traditional week one Mr. Manic Depressive winner Doctor Saturday. And, uh… MGoBlog , your poll host. Don't look at me, I don't vote anymore.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	The Bull Gator	Florida		48
2	The Daily Gopher	Minnesota		54
3	Fantasy College Blitz	Oklahoma State		60
4	Orange::44	Syracuse		60
5	SpartyMSU	Michigan State		64

On the flipside of things, these are the preseason poll believers that only lightly dabbed at their near-perfect ballot after a week of chaos. The Bull Gator was exceptionally generous to Oklahoma, dropping them only five slots and actually keeping BYU eight slots behind their opening-week victim. Similarly, Oregon did not get summarily dismissed after an opening game that went as disastrously as possible—Boise, at least, is in front of them—and Virginia Tech got a light tickling for their Alabama loss, dropping only two spots.

Rank	Team	PPB
1	Florida (99)	24.8
2	Texas	23.4
3	Southern Cal	22.1
4	Oklahoma	22.1
5	Alabama	19.8
6	Ohio State	17.7
7	Penn State	17.7
8	LSU	16.0
9	Virginia Tech	15.9
10	Oklahoma State	15.8
11	Mississippi	15.8
12	California	14.0
13	Georgia (1)	12.3
14	Georgia Tech	10.6
15	Boise State	9.9
16	Oregon	9.7
17	TCU	8.8
18	Utah (1)	5.1
19	Florida State	5.0
20	Brigham Young	4.8
21	North Carolina	4.3
22	Iowa	4.2
23	Nebraska	3.6
24	Notre Dame	3.0
25	Miami (Florida)	2.0

Also Receiving Votes: Illinois(1.9), Oregon State(1.9), Kansas(1.5), Clemson(1.4), Texas Tech(1.3), Michigan State(1.2), Pittsburgh(1.2), Rutgers(0.8), Arkansas(0.6), Cincinnati(0.6), West Virginia(0.5), South Florida(0.4), Missouri(0.3), North Carolina State(0.3), South Carolina(0.3), Tennessee(0.3), Mississippi State(0.2), UCLA(0.2), Vanderbilt(0.2), Kentucky(0.2), Maryland(0.1), Northwestern(0.1), Virginia(0.1), Michigan(0.1), Washington(0.1), Auburn(0.1), Central Michigan(0.1), Southern Miss(0.1), Stanford(0.1), Boston College(0.1), Nevada(0.1), East Carolina(0.1), Arizona State(0.0), Wake Forest(0.0), Wisconsin(0.0), Arizona(0.0), Colorado(0.0), UAB(0.0),

Total Ballots: 101

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

There's deep analysis leading to understanding, and then there's just being contrarian. Anointing anyone other than Florida would have been the latter and lo, it has not come to pass. In fact, only two first-place votes went anywhere else and we'll see in the next section that they weren't based on team quality or events that actually happened.

There are some interesting differences between Blogpoll voters and the AP folks towards the bottom of the top ten, where LSU and Penn State find themselves three and two spots higher in the blogger hivemind's view than the AP's. Virginia Tech and Ole Miss take two and three point drops to balance everything out; has Doctor Saturday's persistent skepticism of Ole Miss' chances burrowed itself into the hivemind? If there's one blogger in the poll everyone reads it's him.*

Past that, things get creepy. After Ole Miss shows up at #11 the rest of the poll follows in lockstep with the AP except for three occasions where teams flip spots and the bloggers' inclusion of Miami over Kansas at #25. I'm thinking of experimenting with some confidence bonuses where you can pick a few teams that you feel you have a good handle on and weight your votes there more heavily, and this is an argument for that sort of thing.

(*Irony alert! Doc Sat takes the opportunity provided by his ballot to retract some of that criticism :

I've been a bit of a hater on the widespread Rebel love this offseason, but the more closely I look at Ole Miss , the more I see what everyone else has been seeing in them: A first-rate quarterback, a dangerous set of skill players, a top-20 defense with eight starters back, a trio of big-game wins last year and a schedule absent both Florida and Georgia.

He still sticks the Rebels 10th, which is lower than the AP consensus.)

Wack Ballot Watchdog

About those extraneous #1s:

• The Georgia vote comes from Tomahawk Nation , which decided to make its preseason ballot based entirely on schedule strength. Do I like this? No. It creates a very, very silly ballot which won Mr. Bold by a huge margin and I thought seriously about spiking it. I decided against it since it's the preseason and I don't have any hard evidence that Vanderbilt is not a top ten team. But I am implementing a new guideline: if your ballot wins Mr. Bold by five or more points I'm removing it from that week's poll.
• Your Utah supporter is The Lions Den , who explains his rationale like so: "it may seem weird that Utah is #1, but they were number one when the season ended, and they haven't lost a game yet." It does seem weird because Utah wasn't #1 by any measure when last season ended, actually. Eigh… preseason polling.

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	Utah	5.5
2	Oregon	5.4
3	Notre Dame	4.9
4	Boise State	4.8
5	Florida State	4.3

This is traditionally the realm of the mid-major and it is so again this year, with Florida State showing up largely because of TN's wack ballot and Notre Dame and Oregon your official most unpredictable BCS teams.

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		11.92
2	Saurian Sagacity	Florida		5.87
3	One Bronco Nation Under God	Boise State		4.41
4	Frank Helps You	Tulane		4.09
5	The Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		3.94

As previously discussed, TN dominates Mr. Bold by ranking all schedule-like. That six-plus point margin of victory is probably a poll record, and in the future we'll weed out polls so divergent from the rest of the blogs that they obviously don't exist in the same reality.

 

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Block U	Utah		1.03
2	ScalpEm.com	Florida State		1.24
3	Orange::44	Syracuse		1.28
4	Buffs.tv	Colorado		1.34
5	Block C	Clemson		1.34

Mr. Numb Existence goes to the blogger with the dullest ballot and Block U manages to slide in with a number that would stand a good chance of winning midseason, when the options you have with your vote are far more constrained. I'm not going to make a joke about Mormons. I'm not.

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	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		17.99
2	The Rakes of Mallow	Notre Dame		9.96
3	The Smoking Musket	West Virginia		8.49
4	Subway Domer	Notre Dame		7.96
5	Not Qualified to Comment	Illinois		6.09

Since TN didn't rank based on team quality and giving multiple awards to the same folk are boring your editor declares Rakes of Mallow your winner of 2009's first Coulter/Kos Award , which is handed to the most flamingly homer ballot in the poll. Rakes saw fit to land Notre Dame at #13 despite their 7-6 year last year, which isn't totally insane with 18 starters back but is decidedly optimistic.

You'll note that another Notre Dame blog also shows in the top five; this is the place where I note the wroth and terrible CK Award Curse, which saw CK Award winners see their teams go about 20% against the spread last year and was cause for celebration amongst certain Michigan State fans when a certain Spartan blogger who won this award all the time was excised from the poll for winning this award all the time.

No, this didn't play into the switch at the top here, since Rakes' ignominy only applies to Notre Dame's opener against Nevada.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Dawg Sports	Georgia		-7.35
2	Foul Balls	Notre Dame		-3.04
3	Hail to the Orange	Illinois		-1.91
4	Fantasy College Blitz	Oklahoma State		-1.83
5	We Will Always Have Tempe	Ohio State		-1.72

The flip side of the CK award, and always one with far smaller margins until teams start tanking winnable games, is the Straight Bangin' award, which is named for a blog run by a rabid Michigan fan that dominated this award until such time as he was proven right and Michigan fell out of the poll entirely.

This year's inaugural winner, and one with a healthy margin for this category, is Dawg Sports . Kyle King & Co saw fit to place Georgia only #21. Anti-jinx, perhaps, except Kyle's got thousands of words to back it up :

I believe the ‘Dawgs are either seriously overrated or severely underrated . I’m hoping it’s the latter, but, until I am given concrete reasons to believe otherwise, I’m betting on the former . We should find out in a hurry which of the two it is.

Meanwhile, Foul Balls attempts to repair some of the damage done above… and apparently expects this is the end of the Charlie Weis era.

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.

Swing does not exist for the preseason ballot.

For some reason, our total number of votes in the BlogPoll dipped a bit this week. I'm not sure why, since it's not like there's anything happening in the world of college basketball that would distract our loyal cadre of bloggers from ...

Oh, right. That Tournament thing. That thing with the brackets, and the 32 games in two days, and the Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery calls, and the North Dakota St.'s, and the Big 12 vs. the Ivy League, and the North Carolina fast breaks and Eric Maynor floaters and Blake Girffin monsterjams and John Calipari's hair and the net-cutting and the "One Shining Moment" ... right, that thing, the best annual sporting event in America. I guess that's as good an excuse as any.

Those of us who did pull ourselves away from our brackets long enough to fill out a ballot combined to come up with this:

BlogPoll Week 6

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Louisville (16)	24.0	1.4	4
2	North Carolina (6)	23.4	1.3	--
3	Pittsburgh (4)	23.2	1.1	2
4	Memphis (3)	22.3	1.8	--
5	Connecticut	21.5	0.8	2
6	Duke	19.4	1.7	2
7	Michigan St.	18.4	1.3	1
8	Oklahoma	17.6	2.6	1
9	Missouri	16.1	2.3	5
10	Villanova	14.2	3.7	1
11	Kansas	13.6	3.0	1
12	Wake Forest	13.6	3.1	3
13	Gonzaga	13.4	4.1	1
14	Syracuse	11.4	4.3	6
15	Washington	11.2	2.7	2
16	Purdue	8.8	3.9	7
17	Florida St.	7.7	3.7	7
18	UCLA	7.2	3.9	3
19	Arizona St.	6.6	4.2	2
20	Xavier	4.6	3.5	2
21	Clemson	4.3	3.9	5
22	Butler	3.7	3.8	3
23	Marquette	3.1	3.6	6
24	West Virginia	2.9	3.9	2
25	Utah	2.5	2.9	1

Also Receiving Votes: Louisiana St.(2.4), Brigham Young(2.2), Illinois(2.1), Utah St.(0.9), Ohio St.(0.4), Siena(0.4), St. Mary's(0.3), Dayton(0.3), Oklahoma St.(0.2), Tennessee(0.2), Wisconsin(0.1), Temple(0.1), Baylor(0.1), Robert Morris(0.1), Mississippi St.(0.1), North Dakota St.(0.1), California(0.1), Texas A&M(0.1), Southern California(0.0),

Total Ballots: 29

Votes by blog here , votes by team here .

As expected, weekend conference tournament warriors Louisville, Syracuse, Florida St., Missouri, and Purdue all saw big bumps. Tourney flameouts UCLA, Marquette, and Wake Forest all experienced punishing drops. Joining this league of losers was ... well, I'll let the East Coast Bias explain: Clemson losing to Georgia Tech is the turd of all turd performances.

I think Depaul victims Cincinnati might have something to say about that, but nonetheless that seems reason enough for a five-place drop for the Tigers.

Following their loss to eventual bid thieves Mississippi St., LSU was among the handful of teams dropping out of the poll this week. This leaves the BlogPoll once again without a single team from the SEC, the conference a certain Mr. Simpson --and, apparently, the NCAA Selection Committee--would refer to as The Suckiest Bunch of Sucks That Ever Sucked.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

As has been the case for the last couple of weeks, there's some pretty serious dissension amongst BlogPoll voters about what team ought to go at the top of the poll. After their twin Big East regular season and conference tournament championships, Louisville has unsurprisingly surged to No 1 in the poll as well as on the Committee's S-Curve. But they're far from a unanimous choice, thanks in part to the fact that two of the teams also receiving No. 1 votes can still, somehow, fall under the label of "question mark."

One is Memphis, who ground C-USA under their heel for the third straight year but still has its doubters because it's, well, the C-USA. For North Carolina, it's true that the January losses to Wake Forest and Boston College are becoming increasingly distant memories ... but the sight of Ty Lawson on the bench during the ACC tournament while the Tar Heels flailed against Va. Tech and Florida St. is not. Whither the Heels? BC Interruption votes UNC No. 1 and provides the positive spin: We think North Carolina is the best team in the country, despite their semifinals loss to Florida State. With Lawson back for the NCAAs, they should represent the ACC in the tournament well.

But Texas blog Barking Carnival drops the Heels to No. 5 and sees things more than a little differently: Sorry, but Lawson ain’t healthy. Hansbrough dedicates "All Out of Love" by Air Supply to Ty Lawson. The Heels are likely the first number 1 seed bounced if Lawson is dinged.

The Heels had better hope the former view is the accurate one: both potential second-round opponents Butler and LSU are dangerous enough when on their game to make UNC pay if Lawson really isn't his usual self.

This week's poll has also continued the long, slow eviction of its non-power conference representation, as Xavier and Butler both dropped a few slots after tournament losses to Temple and Cleveland St., respectively. From Old Virginia is not in a forgiving mood: The A-10 champion is Temple. Xavier earns a bat to the face for losing to them in the tournament. Xavier's got nice wins and all over Memphis and Missouri, which is why I repented and let them stay in the top 25 in the first place. I almost dropped them entirely for flubbing a mid-major league they have no business losing.

Me, I think that's a bit harsh considering that Temple's a good team that beat Tennessee and had a lot more to play for than the lockey-lock Musketeers. (Ditto Butler and Cleveland St., a team that would knock you on your rear end just for thinking about scoring.) Then again, Xavier's been taking on water in the A-10 for weeks now. Taken as just a loss to Temple, the X shouldn't be dinged too harshly. Taken as confirmation the Musketeers aren't the same team they were before New Year's, the dinging makes a lot more sense.

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.

Highest stdev

#	Team	StdDev
1	Syracuse	4.3
2	Arizona St.	4.2
3	Gonzaga	4.1
4	West Virginia	3.9
5	Clemson	3.9

So, how much stock do you put in conference tournament performance? If you put a whole lot of stock in it, you've probably got the marathon men from Syracuse pretty high up the ballot after last week's theatrics. If not, maybe you still see the same bunch of Orangemen that lost 7 of 10 from mid-January to mid-February. And so Syracuse stands atop this week's standard deviation chart.

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	House of Sparky	Arizona St.		3.67
2	Falcon Nation	Bowling Green		3.03
3	Oread Boom Kings	Kansas		2.93
4	Joe Cribbs Car Wash	Auburn		2.86
5	Making the Dance	Illinois		2.86

After a few weeks away from the poll, Arizona St. blog House of Sparky returns to vote LSU No. 11, Duke No. 14, Clemson No. 15, and Dayton No. 18 to earn this week's Mr. Bold award. While we're (sort of) on the topic of LSU and where they should be ranked, here's a Fun Fact: Northwestern finished with as many RPI top-50 wins as the the SEC's three NCAA entrants combined. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 Southeastern Conference!

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	The Fifth Corner	North Carolina		1.49
2	Spartans Weblog	Michigan St.		1.53
3	Hammer & Rails	Purdue		1.59
4	I Bleed Blue and White	Villanova		1.61
5	The Slipper Still Fits	Gonzaga		1.75

As is only fitting for a blog that takes its name from a strategically-sound if monotonous offense notorious for lulling its opponents to sleep and winning games, UNC-affiliated The Fifth Corner takes home this week's Mr. Numb Existence award for their wholesome, satisfying, and supremely run-of-the-mill ballot.

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 basketball team.

The Coulter/Kos Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	I Bleed Blue and White	Villanova		4.83
2	The Slipper Still Fits	Gonzaga		2.62
3	Hammer & Rails	Purdue		2.24
4	Making the Dance	Illinois		1.93
5	Spartans Weblog	Michigan St.		0.59

Back for another week on top of the Coulter/Kos chart is Wildcat blog I Bleed Blue and White . For the past two weeks IBBW has tempted fate by running away with the CK Award, only to be curiously rewarded with a string of impressive and/or dramatic 'Nova wins and now a cushy 3-seed for the 'Cats at home in Philadelphia. So we'll see if (or when) IBBW gets the usual brand of CK Award-based comeuppance, but you should know this: the last time 'Nova received a 3 seed in the East Region was 1995, when the Kerry Kittles-led 'Cats went down to 14th-seeded Old Dominion in three overtimes. Just sayin'.

The Straight Bangin' Award

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Tomahawk Nation	Florida St.		-1.72
2	House of Sparky	Arizona St.		-0.62
3	The Critical Fanatic	Michigan St.		-0.41
4	Gate 21	Tennessee		-0.24
5	Colonials Corner	Robert Morris		-0.10

Most voters were pretty impressed by the Seminoles' run to the ACC final. But not so much FSU blog Tomahwak Nation --perhaps remembering the heart-stopping lows of squeezing past Georgia Tech as well as the blissful highs of dethroning Carolina, TN only ranked their 'Noles 20th and earn this week's Straight Bangin' Award.

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	The Critical Fanatic	Michigan St.		118
2	Tar Heel Fan	North Carolina		114
3	March To Madness	San Diego St.		108
4	From Old Virginia	Virginia		104
5	The Fifth Corner	North Carolina		100

I'm at a loss to explain what Gonzaga did to drop 9 spots on the ballot of Michigan St. blog The Critical Fanatic , or how Wisconsin deserved a four-spot bump, but everything else here seems to be normal reaction to last week's tournament madness. Still, those two changes are weird enough to power TCF to this week's Mr. Manic Depressive Award.

Mr. Stubborn

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Inside Creighton Hoops	Creighton		40
2	I Bleed Blue and White	Villanova		42
3	A Sea of Blue	Kentucky		46
4	Black and Green ND Basketball	Notre Dame		50
5	The East Coast Bias	St. John's		52

Remember what I said about some voters not putting much stock in conference tournaments? Safe to say that's how Max at Inside Creighton Hoops feels after leaving his top nine teams unchanged from last week. I might say something here about how maybe we shouldn't put that little stock in Championship Week results, but this is a guy for whom seeing Arizona pop up on the Selection Show "was like getting punched in the stomach by 1985 Dolph Lundgren." I think we can cut him some slack.

That's not all folks, but it's pretty close. The BlogPoll will be dormant during the NCAA Tournament and back for one final round of balloting after things get settled in Detroit. See you then.

The CBSSports.com College Basketball BlogPoll Breakdown is written by Jerry Hinnen. For questions or comments regarding the poll, contact Jerry at jerry -at- warblogeagle.com.