| 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.
