The BlogPoll Leaves The Nest

If you happen to subscribe to every BlogPoll voter's RSS feed like I do this announcement will come as no surprise, but you're probably sane and thus do not so here goes: effective this week, the BlogPoll will appear at CBS Sports. An initial Monday poll is up right now, actually.

The process will go like this in the future:

• Bloggers post initial ballots by Monday at noon; this gets packaged into CBS's weekly poll feature.
• Readers at CBS will be encouraged to look at the various ballots and perhaps argue their case to non-believers.
• Revised ballots are still due at 10 AM Wednesday, and that's when the full poll will be posted with your standard commentary. This will happen at CBS.

This is something of a milestone for bloggers, as a mainstream site is partnering with a wide swath of the internet's wild west and giving some credence to the idea that maybe there is something different and, if not necessarily better, at least interesting enough to pay attention to there.

What they'll find is that the sausage is really close to the surface, with weird ballots and omissions and unabashed homerism and unabashed anti-homerism in the wake of humiliating defeat. They'll find that there's not a lot of room for strenuous disagreement between the BP and the AP because wins and losses rule all, unless you're a coach. They'll find a healthy skepticism for light schedules, tribes of resume-voting zealots. And hopefully they'll find intelligent coverage of their favorite team.

This would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of voters new and old, even the ones I regularly battle over their voting philosophies, and I'd like to thank everyone for their participation.