BlogPoll Week 13

Previously: Preseason; Week 2; Week 3; Week 4; Week 5; Week 6; Week 7; Week 8; Week 9; Week 10; Week 11; Week 12.

Note: if you see last week's poll it's a cache thing, I think. Refresh should cure it.

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

Momentary dissent about Ohio State is quashed, obvs. Michigan and Southern Cal are virtually tied for second place. Very little happens otherwise.

Risers: VaTech got a healthy bump by stoning Wake. Everyone else slid up conveyor-belt style.

Fallers: Wake and Rutgers were hammered for being hammered, Rutgers by an unranked (but decent!) Cincinnati team.

Wack Ballot Watchdog:

• Everyone is probably sick of hearing about WVU and UL, but I am at a loss how you can justify UL behind the Mountaineers, especially by huge margins. Frank McGrath has WVU #12, UL #18. Eagle In Atlanta has WVU #8, Louisville #17. Conquest Chronicles has WVU #7, UL #14. The Nittany Notebook has WVU #9, Louisville #13. Anyone care to explain the reasoning here?
• Is Georgia Tech a top ten team (EDSBS has them at nine) or #24 (Dawg Sports)? Probably neither.
• Bevo Sports really likes LSU. Lots: #3.
• Not exactly wack, but there's a remarkable amount of consensus on Notre Dame: about half the voters have them #6.

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 Dawg Sports, who was extremely kind to Rutgers, leaving them in the top 10 at #8. Also standing out as desperately weird: Auburn #6. Please repeat after me, Kyle: the SEC is not that good. Four of the top ten teams in the country do not play in it. I will post more pictures of Scarlett Johansson.

There's also some foofery at the bottom (a vote for Navy over Wake? BC languishes at #25?) that makes no the sense to me.

Mr. Numb Existence is Dan Shanoff, who managed to hew the closest to the poll's overall opinion despite the indefensible notion of #6 WVU and #9 Louisville. The horror!

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 belongs to Rocky Top Talk for placing the Vols #13, inexplicably up seven after last week. Was beating Vanderbilt that impressive? Evidently, as our second Tennessee blogger checks in third on the list.

Straight Bangin' Award is Ramblin' Racket's. He placed Georgia Tech a point lower than the poll average -- better than last week's winner but not by much. Notable: RR won the first CK award by a wide margin for putting GT #7 in the preseason. As Gregg Easterbrook might say, this has a deep and abiding significance, if only we knew what it was.

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 Eagle In Atlanta for a second consecutive week. When you bump Rutgers up to #3 and Wake up to #6 and they both lose dismally, this sort of thing happens to your ballot. Everyone else moves wildly, too. Wisconsin has leapt from the mid-20s to #7 in the course of two weeks. Louisville takes the pipe as well... but West Virginia doesn't? The Mountaineers are ranked nine spots ahead of UL?

Mr. Stubborn is Black Shoe Diaries. The inverse of the above: Rutgers and Wake already low and thus not punished extensively. Everyone else remains relatively static.