ESPN Bruce seems to be getting his slappin' arm limber($):

They say the antiquated SEC way can't cope with these polished-up diversified schemes. Their heads will be spinning, they predict. They point to long-time Pac-10 offensive coordinator Al Borges' arrival at Auburn before last year as Exhibit A. ... And now, they predict Phase II is about to begin: Urban Legend and his glossy spread option!!! The media has also hopped on board. This has sparked a very heated, and often comical debate. In truth, it's somewhere between the Moneyball vs. Scouts beef and the great Moors/Moops debate.

Dayum! In a nutshell:

But I'm not buying the notion that the SEC is full of a bunch of cavemen with whistles around their necks, and therefore I'm a little skeptical of the takeover theory.

I give him two weeks before he calls someone shallow and facile.

(FTR: It's Moops.)

So, based on everyone's input on the BlogPoll's direction I think there were some overriding themes:

• Weighting is no good.
• Tangible repercussions for weird/biased ballots should definitely be delayed for a good while while we work out whether they're necessary or not.
• Decisions on what's weird/biased should be decided democratically.

That's where it stands at the moment. If I indulge in any weighting stuff it'll be strictly experimental. The straight-no-chaser poll will remain the primary one for the foreseeable future. Scorn will be our weapon of choice against the unreasonable.

Several pollsters expressed dismay at the overt similarities between the coaches/AP and blog polls. Joe summed it up best: "we aren't as cool as we think we are." True. (I'm A Realist has a useful side-by-side-by side comparison.) I was a little disappointed with the lack of influence some well-reasoned arguments had on the poll at large. NC State and BGSU were teams that had cases made for them but got only small bumps relative to the other polls and were not able to crack the top 25. I don't know what percentage of pollsters bothered to read the "rank 'em" roundtable, but it doesn't seem like it was many... or at least there weren't many convinced by the arguments presented.

But, as this was the first-ever BlogPoll, I'm not too surprised. It will take time to develop a culture around this thing, and it'll take some time before people become familiar enough with each other to change their minds based on someone else's opinion. Changing minds is not easy, no matter the fragility of the ideas they hold.

This year is AA ball. We ain't ready for the major leagues yet. Rob got this comment on his blogpoll post:

Anonymous said...

What was your criteria for voting? Any of these people for that matter. I'm willing to wager that the majority of people voting can't even name one player on every team they ranked. Awesome.

P.S. You do realize that ESPN has had a fan poll for about 10 years now, right?
The standard deviation with 50000+ voters is much much less than with about 100.

and I've got no answer for that. Developing one is job one. Job two is beer.

Hey, at least we've got Ray Ratto on our side.

Update 8/25: Added NY DE McKenzie Matthews, noted that Myron Rolle announces September 1, linked to Steve Brown article (forced fumble an a 98 yard touchdown return!). Linked to Tim Tebow article, Det News article on the best players in the state this year featuring Patilla and Graham. Added OH OL Mark Jackson.

Editorial Opinion: no one thinks Rolle is picking Michigan, though he has done a good job of keeping it close to the vest. I doubt he ends up here, unfortunately. Link here.

We're going to kick David Letterman's ass. Ball State. 2006. Feel the lack of excitement.

The Big Ten basketball schedule was recently released. Hawkeye Hoops has the relevant section of it: a list of the opponents each team plays only once. Michigan draws one of the shorter sticks, missing delicious puffy substances Northwestern and Penn State. (Why does the Big Ten play only 16 conference games? Can't they at least go to 18? Do I really need to see Michigan destroy pushovers like Boston University Oakland IUPUI?)

Blogspotting over heah: The Bemusement Park checks in with a Dabbler's Guide to College Football. Good for you Pac 10 fans out there. Check it out between earthquakes. Sunday Morning Quarterback drops his Big Ten preview. He picks the Hated Buckeyes with an Obviously Flawed Computation System, but he does it with panache, so it's cool. The Subsidiary... I don't even know how to describe this. It's obsessive, insane, beautiful: a theorized fall spent road-tripping across the country, catching games as often as possible, wandering about, watching bratwurst, eating football. Sweet. Eat football. And then there's this from Wannabeleader. Uh. Yeah. And stuff. (HT: Boi From Troy.) And Blah Blah Blah has some lingering concerns he'd like addressed.

O Canada, sometimes I love you. Usually this is during the opening theme of Hockey Night In Canada, but it also pops up when I read things like this:

The lockout-ridden CBC was left without camera technicians, directors, announcers and commentators for the game between the Toronto Argonauts and Edmonton Eskimos.

"We've been monitoring the chat rooms and some of the online feedback around the game and in fact the response has been fairly positive," said MacDonald. "Contrary to what some people have said in the press, a lot of fans said they enjoyed it."

Ratings actually increased. Hopefully network management is getting some "right-sizing" ideas. (HT: FO.)

Speaking of Canada, when you make an uncannily accurate comparison between the Canadian Curling Association and the NCAA, well, you get linked. The Sports Economist has your SWEEP! SWEEP! AVAST YER MATIES SWEEEEEEP action.

Sports (Graphically) Illustrated gets a well-deserved knifing from Michael David Smith, also of Football Outsiders, in the latest issue of The New Republic. Insert a lot of words about the unfortunate direction of sports media that you've heard from me before. I actually stopped reading SI before the ESPN Magazine/tabloid pressure came into being because when I got each issue I realized I was reading about the last 10 pages--you know, the "Inside the NFL/NBA/CFB" stuff--and skipping over 80 or so softball profiles of athletes who I find interesting only in the context of competition. People who are both highly paid sports professionals and, you know, not deathly boring are few and far between, like supermodel neuroscientists. I'm at a loss to explain why it seems to be the focus of an ever-expanding coverage universe that results in things like the "Budweiser Hotseat."Gag me with a spoon, as they say.

Check the comments on FO for more discussion.

The Harris Poll sucks! Okay, this is an interesting article from Dennis Dodd on the 114 voters of the Harris poll and their general unsuitability for the job at hand. Four have already resigned. Three, including Lou Holtz, are gone because of their ties to ESPN, which is apparently against this whole polling business now. The fourth is some dude who lays bricks for a living. No, that's not a joke. His connection with college football: he watches a ton of it. Sounds like he'd do a better job than Terry Bradshaw, but alas, it is not to be.

(HT: Fanblogs)

The voracity is verified by the Free Press, though no length of time is given. I've heard from a few unconfirmed-but-good sources that the duration is on the worse side of the scale, closer to the whole year than 4-6 weeks.

Panic level seems low. Vijay and even nattering nabob of negativity (no offense) Joey seem relatively placid, as am I after a few deep breaths. Kolodziej is an able replacement. Michigan's OL was about eight deep with people I wouldn't hyperventilate upon seeing in crunch time. Now they're seven deep, though the two remaining non-panic backups are both interior linemen (at this point apparently Henige and Mitchell), so another tackle injury would put us a nervous place. But probably not a Courtney Morgan-against-Iowa place.

This still fits in the "rumor" category, but four different sources have indicated that tackle Jake Long is seriously hurt. It's supposed to be an ankle. Estimates on the time missed range from four weeks to six weeks to the entire year. The parameters are still up for debate but I think it's extremely doubtful that it's not true. The extent of the injury is probably still unknown.

Redshirt junior Mike Kolodziej is now thrust into the spotlight. Kolodziej actually beat Long out at right tackle last year and started the first couple games before Long took over and started ripping opponent's arms out of their sockets and beating them to death with the now-useless appendage. So he's probably going to be all right. He played large sections of the Rose Bowl and did fine. However, there's now a huge and ridiculous gap back to the third tackle, who would appear to be, uh, I have no idea. Ruben Riley, who was a tackle until he found himself starting at guard midway through last year, would probably slide back outside and whoever lost the LG job would find himself in the starting lineup.

In summary, goddammit.