| 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.
