Blogpoll Week 1
| Rank | Team | PPB | StdDev | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Southern Cal (40) | 24.3 | 1.0 |  2 |
| 2 | Georgia (10) | 22.1 | 4.0 |  1 |
| 3 | Florida (9) | 21.9 | 2.5 | 2 |
| 4 | Ohio State (9) | 21.8 | 4.0 | 2 |
| 5 | Oklahoma (5) | 21.5 | 3.9 | 1 |
| 6 | Missouri | 19.6 | 2.4 | -- |
| 7 | LSU | 18.3 | 3.4 | -- |
| 8 | Texas | 16.2 | 2.9 | 3 |
| 9 | Auburn | 15.6 | 3.7 | 1 |
| 10 | West Virginia | 15.4 | 4.9 | 1 |
| 11 | Wisconsin | 12.5 | 4.2 | 2 |
| 12 | Alabama (2) | 12.3 | 4.9 | 12 |
| 13 | Texas Tech | 12.1 | 5.0 | 1 |
| 14 | Kansas | 10.2 | 4.4 | 1 |
| 15 | Oregon | 9.9 | 4.7 | 3 |
| 16 | South Florida | 9.3 | 4.7 | 3 |
| 17 | Arizona State | 8.9 | 4.0 | 1 |
| 18 | Penn State | 8.5 | 5.2 | 3 |
| 19 | Brigham Young | 8.2 | 4.1 | 1 |
| 20 | Wake Forest | 6.9 | 4.1 | 3 |
| 21 | Utah | 4.7 | 3.9 | 4 |
| 22 | Fresno State | 3.4 | 3.6 | 4 |
| 23 | California | 3.4 | 4.4 | 3 |
| 24 | South Carolina | 2.8 | 3.9 | 2 |
| 25 | UCLA | 2.4 | 4.0 | 1 |
Total Ballots: 75
Votes by blog here, votes by team here.
Like everyone else, the BlogPoll anoints USC #1 after they smoked Virginia. The main difference here is not order of teams but the strength of opinion: USC dominates all comers by over two points per ballot; in other polls the gap between Georgia and the Trojans is vanishingly small.
Also, the BlogPoll’s previous bullishness on VaTech? Not so much.
Wack Ballot Watchdog
A lot of the weird votes for particular teams are the result of “resume ranking,” about which more later. They won’t be covered here because at least they’re logically consistent.
- Lord knows what Garnet and Black Attack sees in #15 North Carolina. When ESPN says you “edged” the Cowboys and they aren’t talking about Dallas or Oklahoma State or even Wyoming, that ain’t good.
- From Old Virginia is hanging on to VT at #16.
- The Bama Sports report has Oregon State #23 but no Stanford, who basically smoked them.
- Miami at #11 seems… enthusiastic.
There’s still not much because we have little data. Extracurriculars after the jump.
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.
Standard deviation is all over the place this week for a lot of reasons: differences in voting philosophy, uncertainty about who or what is actually any good, and so forth and so on. Alabama leaps into the most-disagreed-upon category.
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.
Our traditional SMQ—now Dr. Saturday, actually—Mr. Bold award in week one. We’ve been over this before: SM—er, DS—er… DAMN YOU HINT-ONNNNN discards and and all preseason expectations in his first ballot and goes solely by what happened on the field. This is “resume ranking.” (Mr. Not Quite Bold Enough For An Award, Rakes of Mallow, is also a dedicated resume ranker.) This results in things like ECU #5, Utah #6, Fresno State #7, Bowling Green #10, Kentucky #12, no Ohio State or Oklahoma or Georgia, and so on and so forth.
This is supposed to bat away the preconceived notions that feature heavily in things like the coaches poll (hello, preseason ranking of Michigan) and result in a crystal-pure poll, but it just removes the assumptions to another level. Okay, Kentucky beat Louisville. Who says Louisville isn’t going 3-9? Or Pitt or—dammit—Michigan for that matter?
I don’t like it; we’ve had this debate before; we’ll have it again next year. ENJOY YOUR SHINY AWARD, HINT-ON. [/kodos]
Mr. Numb Existence goes to n00b Purdue blog Off The Tracks, though mysteriously consistently boring Double Extra Point—they are from Nebraska—is lurking.
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 started off the year on the right foot, or the wrong foot, or whatever. Definitely an evil foot, sending vastly-overrated-by-MSU-blogger Michigan State down to ignominious defeat, although Michigan lost so it’s like they’re 1-1. (Ask State fans. I don’t get it.) Also, Tennessee had two bloggers significantly overrate their team and got Crafted.
So it’s bad to finish high up and it’s bad to have more than one blog finish high up and it’s definitely bad to crack double digits. Boston College, then, has some 'splaining to do as they go into the Georgia Tech game.
Bruce Ciskie of Wisconsin is the least enthusiastic about his adopted team and wins the Straight Bangin’ award. I wonder if he wonders if Bret Bielema feels dumb for dumping that Virginia Tech game now? Sean Glennon is easy pickings.
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.
Swing doesn't exist in the preseason poll, obviously.
As you might expect, the kind of blog that utterly discards preseason notions except insofar as they apply to opponents tends to have a monster swing number. I should really go back through the database and figure out if this is an all time record. HINT-ON HERE IS ANOTHER AWARD.
And, of course, there’s a flipside to resume ranking. MOOS dings Clemson all of six spots for their faceplant against ‘Bama. Tennessee slides only three spots. And, egregiously, neither UCLA nor Alabama even enters the poll. Come on here, you’re killing me with this stuff.
Right, Boston College.
EVERYTHING wrong in the world is Notre Dame's fault.
Get a history beyond Flutie and ND '93.
I don't know why MOOS continues to be in the poll. He was a consistently terrible voter last year and it's not even really a college football blog.
I'm interested to know from SMQ, how does beating Syracuse 30-10 qualify Northwestern for a top-25 resume ranking?
Let's look at other great moments in Syracuse openers:
2007: vs. Washington, L 40-12 (next week L at Iowa 35-0)
2006: at Wake Forest, L 20-10
2005: vs. West Virginia, L 15-7
2004: at Purdue, L 51-0
Anyone care to look and see how those teams fared the rest of the season?
As a Syracuse alumnus, I rest my case... and I need a drink.
Scott Dreisbach > Tom Brady
You ask, I respond:
2004 Purdue was a good team that just lost it's mind. They were 5-0 and on their way to a win over Wisconsin when Neckbeard the Magnificent fumbled lunging for a first down that could have iced the game and that fumble was returned for a TD. They then lost a tough one to Michigan (a game I attended), Orton got hurt, and they fell apart to 7-5.
2005 WF'nVa went 11-1 including a BCS bowl victory over Georgia
2006 Wake won the ACC, went 11-2 before losing their BCS bowl to one-loss Louisville. Wake led in the 4th quarter of that game.
2007 Washington was lousy.
Northwestern's schedule is very nice for them. I've said it a million times, but they should probably be disappointed if they don't go 7-2 at least to start the season if guys stay healthy. Their two toughest opponents in their first nine are home games (Purdue and MSU). They play Duke, Iowa, Indiana and Minnesota on the road in that span. I won't be surprised if they do even better than 7-2 if they have any sort of a defense this year and Bacher and Sutton stay healthy.
and all for it. Go Northwestern!
Are your big upset teams in a definite order or are they all just close enough that you just bunched them as you saw fit? I would have imagined perhaps ECU beating VT would move them higher in your resume than Missouri over Illinois as you ranked VT higher than Illinois last week.
I could second guess any of the order from your 10th position to 17th and then again from 18th to 25th. Did you use any particular measure to distinguish between the teams in those groups? I mean obviously its broken down to "beat top competition," "beat BCS competition," and "beat mid-major/worst in a BCS-conference competition," but I'm looking into those subgroups. Are you saying Northwestern's win over Syracuse is a better win than Wake Forest over Baylor? Or Mississippi's win over Memphis is 3 spots better than Wake Forest destroying Baylor on the road?
Just wondering.
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When did diminishing the relative importance of assumptions become a bad thing?
When did diminishing the relative importance of assumptions become a bad thing?
you're not diminishing the importance of assumptions, you're making them count for double, essientially.
Varsity Blue
Total yards: 490 to 301 in Oregon States favor. A couple of dumb turnovers don't make for getting smoked.
Agreed; scrolling down does not bother me. Additionally, I am patient enough to have my browser render the extra two kilobytes of text all at once.
...Mostly I just don't want to move my arm over to the mouse.
is so screwed. it's a X^3 whammy or something. 2 BC blogs lead the poll by a loooongshot. both double digits. if (forbid) the whole team spontaneously combusts or something..... well, you know the URLs on which the blame shall be placed.
Harvard: The MICHIGAN of the East
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
It is well known that beating Notre Dame is the exception that proves the CKA rule. Boston College is the anti-Notre Dame (outperforms its pre-season ranking; wins all of its bowl games; trim and humble coach).
As such, by combining the associative property, the transitive property, cognative dissonance, and the theory of irrelativity, we can conclude the following:
BC winning while under under the CKA curse is equal to any other team beating Notre Dame while under the CKA curse and thus proves the rule holds by fitting within the only known exception.
It's right like 90% of the time!!! I'm always excited to see what the results from last week were (9/10 a loss, obvs).....then it's great to see who's gonna get their's for being a homer.
BC - enjoy your award, and your loss on Saturday.
The answer to Walmart Wolverines: Save-A-Lot Spartans
Check it out, no question, Jim.
Rule #1 of blogpoll, do not fuck with the CKA.
Rule #2 of blogpoll, DO NOT fuck with the CKA!
and from the looks of things a lot of you have been breaking the first two rules of blogpoll.
Kind of surprised that Ball State is getting no love from the interwebs. Probably not Top 25 worthy, but certainly a vote or two here or there.
http://overthepylon.blogspot.com/
Who gave Notre Dame votes?
http://mgoblog.com/blogpoll/team-view.php?week=2&team=117&db=fb
Only one domer in the four...
Our helmets got wings
Ahh, I had to look at it in Firefox to get the links to work.
Technically, Subway Domer rated Notre Dame 19 places higher than the blogpoll did. Although the CK-award goes by points-per-ballot, BC was only overrated by 17 spots. Perhaps this means ND will lose to San Diego St?
Please, god, don't cut your posts in half with "after the jump" links. Hate them. Hate. Them.
Varsity Blue