Pick Six Analysis and Week 2 Results

There were 1,149 people who entered the Pick Six contest and 1,013 unique entries.  225 of you picked the same six teams as somebody else which means you can share in the joy and glory if you picked well, or commiserate if your teams go down in flames. The other 924 of us have nobody who agrees with us about the six best teams.

Before we get on with the analysis of the picks, I’m sure everybody wants to know who Brian picked

1. Boise State (looking good)
2. Stanford (in good shape)
3. Wisconsin (very strong)
4. Notre Dame (u mad bro?)
5. West Virginia (meh)
6. Texas (meh)

If everybody picked randomly we would expect that each team would get 20% of the votes. Let’s see which bandwagons MGoBlog is riding, and which teams we’re shunning.

Group A

We overwhelmingly think Oklahoma and Alabama will be the best teams this season. Almost nobody has any faith in Les Miles and his insanely brave/crazy game strategies.

Group B

Again the highest two ranked teams get a large majority of the picks. In this group our new Big Ten comrade Nebraska gets its fair share of the votes however.  We don’t have much belief that the pair of Big Twelve teams will do well because everybody thinks Oklahoma is going to dominate.

Group C

This group has both the largest percentage and the smallest percentage (of ranked teams). Wisconsin has so far certainly seemed to prove that those 42% of people are correct. South Carolina, Virginia Tech and TCU (Wisconsin’s kryptonite from last year) all get pretty close to the baseline 20% share of the vote. So almost all of Wisconsin’s extra votes came at the expense of people who think Petrino won’t do as well at Arkansas without Ryan Mallet.

Group D

The group of death. Every World Cup has one and so does Pick Six. Our three rivals and two SEC teams make Group D a tough pick. One commenter said that he picked his entire ballot of teams that he dislikes, so he picked Michigan St because he would be most pissed if they ended the season highly ranked. For other “rational entries” MGoBlog collectively thought that Notre Dame would do well.  How’s that working out for you?

(Via KegsnEggs)

Group E

The first group in which the most common pick was not the highest ranked team from the original poll. People finally got bored of picking the first team on the list so West Virginia is barely more popular than Southern Cal (333 votes to 325). Florida with Charlie Weis’s offense also gets a large percentage of picks while nobody thinks Auburn can afford another Heisman and National Championship.

Unranked Teams

The number one rule of playing Pick Six while it was hosted on Blue Gray Sky was “Do not pick Notre Dame.” In the final year 90% (literally! check it out) of the BGS readers chose Notre Dame (who started ranked but ended up unranked), so I and the other brave souls who picked other teams did well. On MGoBlog it appears that a lot of us followed the “Do not pick Michigan” rule. Texas beats Michigan as the most popular unranked team by fourteen votes (344 to 330). I showed the top seven teams in the bar chart because they represent just over three-fourths of the total picks. The pie chart has the most teams that is still legible. In all there were 50 unranked teams selected, including 10 teams that were selected by only a single person.  Perhaps we’ll talk about some of these other selections in future updates.

Only two of these most popular picks are actually ranked in week 2, Texas at #24 and Arizona State ranked #22. The 8 people who picked Baylor are currently doing the best earning 7 points for that #19 ranking. South Florida, the fourth and final team currently ranked, is close behind at #20 earning 6 points in the unranked column for 13 people who thought they would upset Notre Dame in week 1.

Individual ballot analysis

Only one person picked the highest ranked team from each group and then he picked Michigan. So this unnamed user (you know who you are) gets called out for the laziest Pick Six entry.

The most popular ballot according to individual group percentages was Oklahoma, Florida State, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, WVU and Texas. It turns out that this was also tied for the most common ballot with 7 people all picking it.  There were 7 people who switched Stanford and Michigan for Florida State and Texas. Both Stanford and Michigan were 2nd place in their respective groups. The five most popular ballots are:

Nobody picked the least popular team from each group but the closest is Juager who picked LSU (least popular), Texas A&M (least), South Carolina (second-least), Mississippi State (third-least) and Auburn (least).

Week 2 Rankings

Just like the polls during the season, weekly rankings have no bearing on the final winner. They are merely fun to look at and discuss. The standings at this link should be updated every week regardless of if there is a new Diary.

The current perfect ballot is Oklahoma, Florida State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Florida, Baylor earning 93 points. Nobody is perfect yet, but our current leader mattodell15 was right on the money with the ranked teams and only lost 5 points by picking Texas instead of Baylor as his unranked team. Those teams play the last week of the season and he will be rooting hard for the Longhorns that week.

The lowest score of 33 is hurt by Notre Dame, Missouri and Michigan all being unranked and TCU dropping to 22nd in the polls. I don’t know if it is good or bad that this is the worst possible score somebody could have.

The weekly Brian watch has him tied with 36 others for 280th place. Notre Dame is killing his picks but all his other teams have a good chance.