Blogpoll Week One

EMO WEEK PRESENTS

The blogpoll! Completely devoid of any Michigan at all except for six voters who are not good at voting!

This post's whiny emo song:

William, It Was Really Nothing - The Smiths


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This post's August Strindberg quote:

What people call success is only preparation for the next failure.

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.

Ah, movement. Most notable is the drop of former #3 Michigan from the poll entirely after losing to Appalachian State, which you will note is not even a state. Six voters still have Michigan in their ballots, perhaps in a misguided attempt to suck up or something. Michigan checks in at #19 on the RazorBloggers' ballot, #20 on those of Pitch Right and Mountainlair, #22 on that of Gopher Nation, and #25 on the ballots of Bruins Nation and Loser With Socks. Why? I dunno.

Elsewhere, Georgia Tech gets the week's biggest bump for pummeling Notre Dame. They debut at #17. Cal leaps into the top ten by beating Tennessee; Georgia's thorough defeat of Oklahoma State lifts them four, and for some reason Nebraska's win over Nevada is found thrilling by poll voters.

On the downside (other than Michigan, obviously): both Virginia Tech and Texas tumble four spots after decidedly unimpressive openers. This mirrors a three-spot fall for Texas in the AP, but Virginia Tech remained steady at #9 there; here they fall to #12.

Wack Ballot Watchdog:

The wackest ballot is that of SMQB; all ballots bow before his when it comes to wackiness because SMQB ranks only on on-field accomplishments, even in week one. This results in things like #23 Southern Cal and #7 BYU because Southern Cal "struggled" against Idaho, winning 38-10, and BYU had an impressive victory over perennial Pac-10 bottom-feeder Arizona. This might make some sense if the Blogpoll was used for anything other than entertainment purposes as an effort to keep momentum bias from harming teams that are expected to be not good, but since it isn't it seems pointless.

Note: the CSS below is messed up. Sorry. Will fix ASAP.

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.

Unsurprisingly, SMQB is Mr. Bold.

Mr. Numb Existence is a Syracuse blog of convoluted name: Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician. Congratulations. Once again, the only thing to say is "this ballot looks completely reasonable."


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 captured by Bruins Nation for a second straight week; if (when?) UCLA implodes they'll tell you they saw it all coming.

Straight Bangin' can no longer win the Straight Bangin' award because it's no longer possible to undercut Michigan's ranking. Instead, our victor is Addicted To Quack, Michigan's week two opponent. AtQ watched Houston rush for eleventy jillion yards; he is unimpressed. I am saying "unimpressive? wait until you see Michigan's rushing defense!"

That is what I am saying.

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 the possession of Florida blog Saurian Sagacity, which reacted strongly -- but not quite as strongly as SMQB -- to opening day events. USC down #6! Clemson up from the low 20s to #9! Wisconsin from unranked to #10! Etc. But I wonder what Hawaii did against Northern Colorado that warranted at twelve-spot jump?

Corn Nation, meanwhile, did not react strongly and wins the Mr. Stubborn award. Small moves that reflect the poll at large but largely quiescent is CN.