BlogPoll Week 3

(a note: new thing with the polls: asking questions that DEMAND ANSWERS!!! to spur some discussion.)

Hurray, that's the poll hurray. If you're interested, you can see all the individual ballots here.

What was given last wee--a unanimous USC #1--was taken away by the UT victory over OSU. The 'Horns now have 5 first place votes and probably won't relinquish them unless they put in a stinker. USC's performance against BYE... ah, we've all heard that joke before. Never mind. The Big Ten teams largely vacating the top ten allowed some significant move ups, but there are a number of placements that I don't understand: OU anywhere near the top 25 after those first two performances? Who is voting for these guys? Why? TCU lost to SMU and they definitively proved against Tulsa that they have no quarterbacks. Rob, why the hell do you have them #11? Tigersmack, why #12?

Also, ASU dropped after a should-have-won performance against LSU where they had 500+ yards passing? FSU... top 10? Really?

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.

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 is Eagle In Atlanta, who played Texas Tech to FIU's Michigan and Ohio State, just *hammering* the two for their losses. I can understand the motivation for dropping Michigan from #4 to #23 for that performance against Notre Dame, but Ohio State dropping 15 spots after losing to the #2 (both in the BlogPoll and EIA's own ballot) by a point? Harsh! I do like Vandy at #24 and Oklahoma at #25, though. That has a certain aesthetic appeal. EIA, three Qs: Why Virginia so high (Ian is not optimistic)? Why Louisville at #6 (still no d)? And why the contract on OSU's head?

Mr. Numb Existence is Buffs.tv, who radically revamped their poll and somehow find it more in-line than any other. Yes, I find it hard to find something interesting to say about the ballot that looks the most like the poll, if you're wondering.

Next we have the Coulter/Krugman 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 CK Award goes to The Enlightened Spartan, like, again, though the gap is narrowing a bit. A win over ND and he probably relinquishes this award.

Unsurprisingly, the winner of the Straight Bangin' Award is not Straight Bangin', but it is another Michigan blogger, Vijay from iBlog For Cookies. Straight Bangin'? Second. It doesn't matter how low you rank Michigan, BlogPoll, the Michibloggers will limbo under that number by, oh, 6 or 7 spots.

Swing is essentially 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 is Journalism is for Rockstars and its Christmas-tree ballot. Only one team, Georgia, remained static. He's also throwing a bit of a fit as regards OSU, dropping them to #24 from #12 while simultaneously moving UT to #1. Journorock: why punish OSU so heavily for losing to the #1 team narrowly? Ditto for ASU. LSU got a huge boost by beating the Sun Devils but ASU got knocked down 8 spots. Either LSU didn't beat someone that worthy of beating or the Sun Devils aren't that bad.

Mr. Stubborn is... hey! Me! I didn't whack OSU or Michigan too hard for their performances (probably in part because I had both underrated re: the poll at large), didn't skyrocket anyone (ND was already #12), and left most of the bottom of the poll alone since everyone performed basically as expected or played such terrible competition (FIU, the Citadel) that no conclusions could be drawn. You have an open invitation to hammer me with a question to answer about my ballot.