blogpoll

Note to poll voters: if you did not receive an email from me, please let me know. The first poll comes out Monday and you must be apprised of URLs and such.

SB Nation's excellent Missouri blog Rock M Nation will be joining the BlogPoll this fall, and they've thrown out a question to their readers: how the hell should we put together our ballots? This shows seriousness, which is an admirable quality in a voter, but a lack of deference to the poll's President For Life, which is neither admirable nor uncommon.

I've learned over time that I can't tell people what philosophy they should follow when compiling a top 25 poll. Or, rather, I've learned I can tell people what philosophy to follow and they'll just do what they want to anyway. There's only so much control you can pretend to have when the most respected college football blogger around thumbs his nose at some of the poll's published guidelines and the funniest one slaps up haphazard ballots 30 minutes after the deadline, usually after IMing me something like "oh crap give me a few minutes."

So vote how you like, with one exception. This is the exception: ballots designed to call attention to themselves are verboten. The lone spiked ballot in poll history came from Notre Dame uber-blog Blue Gray Sky after the first week of the season. Because I am stupid I deleted it, but by BGS's own admission it was designed to highlight how silly releasing a college football poll after one week of play is. This is a perfectly fine argument to make, and one I might even agree with, but your ballot is not the place to make it. Some voters tend to call attention to their ballots by their voting patterns, whether it's Straight Bangin's sadly prescient Michigan pessimism or SMQ's resume-only first week ballot or Double Extra Point's uncanny ability to have the most boring ballot; these are okay because their notability is a side effect of the voter's habits, not the entire point.

Other than that, feel free to be stupid -- because you will be stupid, iron law of polling, that -- in whatever way you want to. But I do think a unified philosophy benefits polling. SMQ highlights how goofy this polling enterprise can be:

But no one involved with any of the mainstream polls, despite their all-too-frequent use of the term, has ever defined exactly what they mean by the concept of the best team, or how they reach that judgment in comparison with that team's peers. Most of the time, the terms are described in an abstract way, as a mental sum of perceived parts, as if there existed a secret rating system, EA Sports-style, that could settle the issue once and for all.

The BlogPoll's concept of the best team in a sentence: the BlogPoll attempts to rank teams in order of season quality. This is impossible to do before the season and silly to do in the first few weeks, and at these times the poll should be regarded as an approximate guess of which teams will end the year with the highest season quality.

Suggestions to effect this ideal follow.

Once you have enough information, vote by resume only. What qualifies as "enough information" will vary from voter to voter, but I'm sure most will agree once teams are eight or so games into their schedules there's plenty of evidence to go on. Personally, by week five I try to excise everything except results. At that point there's no reason to look at future schedules, no reason to look at preaseason expectations or shiny offensive baubles. Just the facts, m'am.

When you don't have enough information, vote by your guess at team strength, not schedule. In an ideal world everyone would play an identically difficult schedule and this wouldn't be an issue. This is far from an ideal world, and some team just have nummy soft schedules. This is often cited as a reason to rank them high -- SMQ explicitly calls it out as a factor in his preseason ballot -- and drives me crazy.

Place great importance on schedule strength. The poll's greatest development in three years of existence was its continued, extreme skepticism of a Hawaii team that barely eked out victories against poor WAC teams and found itself in the top ten of most major polls and in the BCS against Georgia. That ended with Warrior limbs flung across most of New Orleans and everyone hurredly pretending like that never happened. You should take schedules into account more than it seems the other polls do, IMO.

Style counts. This is really tricky. If a team has three fluke plays go against them and loses a game it statistically dominated, what do you do? Dan Steinberg's pet Vegas Top 25 virtually ignores fluky results and thus can claim to be a better predictive device for upcoming games. The BlogPoll aims to be descriptive, not predictive.

The sad reality of college football these days is that schedules are so watered down and multiple teams will have the same records or nearly identical records at the end of the year but they'll have taken different routes to get there. So, yeah, team A had a better season if it crushed all comers and were under serious threat only a few times while team B squeezed by by the skin of its teeth, assuming schedules are approximately constant.

Back to SMQ for a pithy summary:

That is, assumptions about "the best" are frequently proven wrong by actual events. The best system, then, is not a rigid assessment of perceived strength, but an extremely fluid, strictly achievement-based approach that systematically rejects assumptions and accounts for chaos -- the inevitable black swan -- as the natural order. If South Florida's resumé is the second-best in the country in late October, then yes, it's the second-best team at that point. But probably not for long.

Co-sign. Man the ballot stations.

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	LSU (41)	24.9	0.3	--
2	Georgia (1)	23.1	1.1	2
3	Southern Cal (2)	22.9	1.2	2
4	West Virginia	21.3	1.4	5
5	Missouri	21.2	1.5	2
6	Kansas	20.0	2.0	2
7	Ohio State	18.8	3.3	5
8	Oklahoma	17.9	3.1	5
9	Virginia Tech	16.7	2.0	3
10	Boston College	14.9	1.7	4
11	Texas	14.5	2.8	6
12	Tennessee	13.8	2.9	4
13	Florida	11.2	2.6	3
14	Auburn	10.9	3.3	9
15	Arizona State	10.2	2.9	4
16	Michigan	9.5	3.0	10
17	Cincinnati	8.3	3.2	3
18	Brigham Young	7.8	4.5	1
19	Oregon	7.1	4.7	7
20	Illinois	6.8	3.1	8
21	Texas Tech	5.2	3.1	5
22	Clemson	4.4	3.2	7
23	Wisconsin	3.1	3.2	5
24	Oregon State	2.8	3.3	2
25	Hawaii	2.6	3.1	12

Total Ballots: 44

Hurray, that's the poll, hurray. I can't believe anyone's voting for freakin' Hawaii after that, but at least we've got 'em way lower than the AP (#19). Michigan and Auburn shoot up after bowl victories, though Michigan remains below Florida (understandably, IMO).

In previous years the poll has caught flack for being virtually identical to the coaches' and AP polls as soon as midseason rolls around; this year the BlogPoll's season-long flexibility about who was #1 and skepticism about Hawaii were validating moments. And this final go-around has some significant differences of opinion with the AP, mostly in the rankings of mid-majors with gaudy records and few actual accomplishments: 11-2 BYU is #14 in the AP poll and #18 to bloggers; 12-1 Hawaii is #19 in the AP and #25 to bloggers. This, I think, is good.

Other differences: Ohio State is down two spots, Michigan up two, and Oregon is up 4.

Extracurriculars... are back. Mostly. Specific ballot call-outs are still no-go, as I don't want to push my luck with the server folks and making those static was beyond the scope of this salvage job. Just know that Building The Dam voted Ball State #14 and that's this week's strangest vote.

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Braves and Birds	Georgia		2.98
2	Off Tackle	Texas A&M		2.88
3	Sunday Morning Quarterback	Southern Miss		2.55
4	Bruins Nation	UCLA		2.48
5	Pitch Right	Navy		2.46

Our season-ending Mr Bold is Braves & Birds, whose main offense appears to be shooting Oregon up to #9 after they obliterated South Florida. Also, #11 Cincinnati is pretty out there; as bold ballots go, though, this one has a relatively low average error and isn't that scorn-worthy.

Mr. Numb Existence

#	Blog	Team		Avg Error
1	Double Extra Point	Nebraska		0.98
2	Pitt Blather	Pittsburgh		1.04
3	M Zone	Michigan		1.08
4	Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician	Syracuse		1.10
5	Garnet and Black Attack	South Carolina		1.25

Double Extra Point maintains its super-freaky domina
tion of Mr. Numb Existence.

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Addicted to Quack	Oregon		7.93
2	Buckeye Commentary	Ohio State		3.18
3	Dan Shanoff	Florida		2.82
4	M Zone	Michigan		2.50
5	Eleven Warriors	Ohio State		2.18

Addicted To Quack wins the dire Coulter/Krugman Award for excessive homerism; normally this would be where the predictions of a dismal future wrought by wrathful football gods would go, but Oregon's already suffered enough.

#	Blog	Team		Bias
1	Burnt Orange Nation	Texas		-3.48
2	mgoblog	Michigan		-2.50
3	Rocky Top Talk	Tennessee		-1.80
4	Building the Dam	Oregon State		-0.84
5	Football Outsiders	Michigan		-0.50

Burnt Orange Nation takes the final Straight Bangin' Award for excessive pessimism in the line of fire; I usually try to stay off these lists but there I am in second for remembering the EXTREME MAXIMUM PAIN of various bits of Michigan's season and being not quite so giddy about the Citrus win as the poll at large. Whatever: Rodriguez.

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Tomahawk Nation	Florida State		198
2	Maize n Brew	Michigan		176
3	Conquest Chronicles	Southern Cal		164
4	Eagle in Atlanta	Boston College		158
5	Braves and Birds	Georgia		158

Mr. Manic-Depressive, given to the ballot that changed the most from week to week, goes to Tomahawk Nation.

#	Blog	Team		Swing
1	Off Tackle	Texas A&M		86
2	Frank McGrath	Tulane		88
3	Garnet and Black Attack	South Carolina		104
4	The National Anthem Before A Cubs Game	Minnesota		106
5	SportsFrog	Central Michigan		108

Mr. Stubborn, given to the pollster with the least volatile ballot from week-to week, is the property of A&M blog Off Tackle.

Thanks to all who participated this year, even those I repeatedly questioned the sanity of, and sorry about the year-end technical snafu. In the offseason I'll set to fixing this on a permanent basis and should have some additional bells and whistles for the 2008 season.

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	LSU (14)	23.7	1.5	4
2	Ohio State (15)	23.6	1.4	1
3	Oklahoma (5)	22.9	1.5	5
4	Georgia (4)	21.7	2.0	--
5	Southern Cal (1)	20.4	2.0	2
6	Virginia Tech	20.4	1.8	3
7	Missouri	19.4	1.7	6
8	Kansas	17.3	2.4	2
9	West Virginia	16.1	2.2	7
10	Florida	15.8	3.2	--
11	Arizona State	15.1	3.2	1
12	Illinois	13.2	2.1	1
13	Hawaii (1)	13.1	5.0	2
14	Boston College	12.1	3.2	3
15	Clemson	10.0	2.6	1
16	Tennessee	8.6	3.7	2
17	Texas	6.8	2.9	2
18	Wisconsin	6.6	3.5	1
19	Brigham Young	6.2	3.3	2
20	Cincinnati	5.6	3.4	--
21	Virginia	5.1	3.1	2
22	South Florida	lass="pollppb"> 5.0	3.9	2
23	Auburn	4.8	3.7	1
24	Arkansas	3.0	3.4	1
25	Boise State	2.0	2.8	1

Total Ballots: 40

An amazing split in opinion for the last poll of the year. Bloggers choose the same national championship game as the BCS at large, but pick LSU #1 by a tiny margin over #2 OSU. Ten first place votes of 40 go to Oklahoma, Georgia, USC(?), and Hawaii(?!?!).

Unfortunately, extracurriculars are still down... hosting issues and it's kind of busy in Michigan land. I should have them up for the final poll in January.

The hosting snafu continues. For those voters who find themselves directed to a 404 page, please go here to enter your ballots.

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Missouri (33)	24.7	0.8	2
2	West Virginia (5)	23.8	0.8	2
3	Ohio State	22.4	1.4	2
4	Georgia (1)	21.0	1.8	3
5	LSU	20.8	1.9	4
6	Kansas	18.9	3.4	4
7	Southern Cal	18.5	1.7	4
8	Oklahoma	18.3	2.2	2
9	Virginia Tech	18.1	2.1	1
10	Florida	15.8	2.1	3
11	Boston College	14.5	2.5	3
12	Arizona State	13.2	2.1	6
13	Illinois	12.3	2.3	2
14	Tennessee	11.7	2.6	3
15	Hawaii (1)	11.3	5.6	4
16	Clemson	8.6	3.4	5
17	Wisconsin	6.4	3.3	5
18	Oregon	6.0	4.2	9
19	Texas	5.9	3.3	7
20	Cincinnati	5.5	2.8	3
21	Brigham Young	5.3	"polldev"> 3.8	5
22	Auburn	5.0	4.0	3
23	Virginia	4.9	3.1	7
24	South Florida	3.9	3.6	--
25	Arkansas	2.1	3.1	1

Also Receiving Votes: Boise State(1.9), Texas Tech(1.7), Connecticut(0.9), Wake Forest(0.3), Kentucky(0.3), Michigan(0.3), Air Force(0.2), Oregon State(0.2), Tulsa(0.1), Mississippi State(0.1), Central Florida(0.1), Penn State(0.0), Troy State(0.0), Mississippi(0.0),

Total Ballots: 40

It's here! Unfortunately, the poll particulars are socked away in a place I can't get to; I hope to fix this by next week. Briefly, the Hawaii first-place voter is Big Red Network and the Georgia voter is Frank McGrath.

The company that hosts the poll software has pulled the plug on it temporarily, as the increased traffic here was causing excessive loads on the server. I'm trying to work around the problem but a lot of voters were locked out of voting this week and I can't access the existing votes, so no poll today. Hopefully this gets resolved ASAP... if I had to guess I'd say there won't be a poll this week.