BlogPoll Week 14

(note: due to a consistent morning time drain on Wednesday, you can expect the poll at about noon going forward.)

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

Fallers: Yeah, don't lose to Nevada and expect mercy. Fresno State remained static after losing a tight game to #1 USC last week. This week it's a nine spot freefall. Also, don't get waaaasted by an good-not-great Florida team and expect to stay in the poll. Florida State is gone. In the succinct letters of frequent commenter Colin: "kthxbye."

Risers: Big winner this week is Boston College, who didn't play. Eh, gofigs. They are 8-3 and are moving towards their record's baseline.

Wack Ballot Watchdog: Temporarily suspended due to time constraints, unfortunately.

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.

Texas Tech again. Yeah, we know.

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 still Mayor Kyle King, though you should note that the margin of his victory is very slim and the average error this week isn't particularly high. Leaping off his ballot are Georgia Tech at #11, up three after their loss to UGA, and... er, not that much else. ND and UCLA are low, though UCLA got bumped up five from last week; Michigan is high; the bottom of the ballot is a little strange. If that's our boldest ballot we are all Numb Existence.

Mr. Numb Existence is the blog formerly known as All Things Longhorn. Now restyled Burnt Orange Nation, they submit predictive ballots and ignore emails from MGoBlog about updating their information on this handy form.

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 shifts over to Fresno blogger MDG, who is still holding on to his Bulldogs at #18, though he did ding them seven spots from last week. We'll spare the rod this week given the mess past about #15. Who knows?

The Straight Bangin' Award is the property of Football Outsiders, but since they only placed Michigan about a spot and a half under their average there's no need to re-bang the Whiny Michigan Fans drum. No, wait until the bowl game for that.

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 is Corey of Sporting Fools. This is largely because he dropped the sword of Damocles on Georgia Tech; the Jackets went from #14 to gone after their loss to UGA. I know they're 7-4, but that seems awfully harsh. Also contributing to the high swing is a major bump for Florida--no doubt because Corey's eyes were stapled open Clockwork Orange-style during that 34-7 shellacking.

Mr. Stubborn is RD Baker from Cheap Seats, and hoooo boy this is going to be some sort of record. RD's ballot differs in these ways: Oklahoma is #25 instead of Central Florida... and that's it. How? Well, he had Fresno down at #21 already and didn't have Georgia Tech on his ballot (and is that really reasonable) so there was no one to drop. Still, couldn't you have rejiggered a couple of additional teams just for the look of the thing? The BlogPoll is nothing if not completely, totally professional.