BlogPoll Week 4

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

Big mover this week is Michigan State, who popped up from unranked to #17 and slid in front of Notre Dame--though both schools are still behind Michigan, OMG BIAS. Small dings were given to OSU and Cal for less than impressive victories against bottom-feeders. Looking at the PPB and standard deviation (below) indicates that we have a near-unanimous #1, a near-unanimous #2, and then LSU, UF, and VT in a group of chasers at 3-5 before a major drop to Georgia at #6 and a precipitous drop to Florida State at #7. Another cliff shows up after OSU at #9.

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.

A consensus is building at the top of the poll, but there are some wild disagreements in the middle. I believe Cal set an all-time (four weeks!) record for standard deviation this week. Personally I don't even have them in my poll after they needed a fourth quarter comeback to beat Illinois, but Chris Wilson has them #7. In fact, if you look at their vote table, every rank from 7 to unranked was chosen by a voter save 8 and 24. Now that's some impressive disagreement.

FYI: The top five teams in the standard dev category are all Big Ten or Pac 10 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.

Eagle In Atlanta's habit of brutally penalizing any loss has garnered him Mr. Bold for a second consecutive week. That and a couple of huge moves for UCLA (up 13 to #7) and Michigan State (up from unranked to #10), Vandy at #19, and stuff. I know we all like Vandy The Underdog, but #19 seems... generous.

Mr. Numb Existence is Texas blogger PoliBlog. I again find it difficult to comment on this category, but the ND 15-Michigan 16-MSU 17 trifecta seems specifically designed to piss Spartan fans off, so I give it a thumbs up.

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 has been wrested from the grasp of The Enlightened Spartan, who has taught me a valuable lesson about running my mouth before the season. Yes, MSU is a head of Michigan on my poll this week. You were right. Now you can silence the yammering. Our new winner is Buffs.tv, who has Colorado at #18. They probably won't get the opportunity to repeat, since Colorado plays Miami next week and will either start getting a lot more votes or lose and force Buffs.tv to drop the alma mater.

The winner of the Straight Bangin' Award is the once and future king, Straight Bangin', who wrested the crown back from iBlog For Cookies after losing it for the first time. The reason? IBFC bumped Michigan up one spot; Straight Bangin' dropped them, figuring that Texas A&M's 66-8 win over SMU was more impressive that Michigan's 55-0 win over EMU. Go figure.

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 I'm a Realist, who went (wait for it...) flapjack nuts over the Miami-Clemson game, rocketing the 'Canes up from #24 to #12 and killing Clemson for the loss, dropping them nine spots to #24. I don't get it--the game went to triple overtime and the teams have the same record with one good win, Clemson over A&M and Miami over Clemson. There's the season projection argument I made re: UM/ND, but if that's the case why have Miami so low and Clemson so high in the first place? IAR, got an explanation?

Two things also of note: One, a week after winning Mr. Stubborn, I'm second here. My manic-depressiveness is itself manic-depressive. Two, you can see the numbers settling down here. Whereas our winners in the first couple weeks in the 100s, 110s, or 120s, IAR barely cracked 80 this week.

Mr. Stubborn is Army blogger King Mouse, who moved a total of six teams and only knocked BC and ND two slots each for losing, but does have a H2H-plausible MSU/ND/UM triplet at 14-16.

FIN!