AP Top 25 Poll by Voter
From https://collegepolltracker.com/football/distribution/2023/week-7
Michigan received votes for:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th
11 29 10 8 1 0 1
All told there were 83 times that teams were ranked higher than Michigan:
Top 10 by Vote Distribution (Darker = more votes; Red Box = 1 vote only)
Full Voting Chart with Michigan Highlighted:
Not sure how someone can gain or lose credentials for this but there are a few whose methods might be suspect.
October 9th, 2023 at 12:02 AM ^
what...
exactly what football has Matt Baker been watching
and can he stop hanging out with Stefan Krajisnik and Chris Murray
October 9th, 2023 at 12:05 AM ^
OTOH we are getting people in Austin and College Station to agree on something and that is that Michigan is number 1.
if we can pull that off...what's next? Michigan bringing together [deleted...political example] oh no wait how about [deleted too topical/hot button/too soon] or [no can't make jokes about UM bringing together itself and its own GEO either]
October 9th, 2023 at 10:52 AM ^
GEO and Michigan?! Never happening. Yes, I was a Grad Student, TA, and RA.
October 9th, 2023 at 12:21 AM ^
His LinkedIn profile says he's a Northwestern grad. I expected it to be a different school.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-baker-29803a9
October 9th, 2023 at 1:02 AM ^
Northwestern College
October 9th, 2023 at 6:58 AM ^
https://www.nwciowa.edu/
October 9th, 2023 at 8:46 AM ^
Northwestern Technological Institute. He's an HVAC repair specialist.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:54 AM ^
no chance. i know those kinda guys and they're deffo more observant than journalists.
October 9th, 2023 at 10:05 AM ^
Where he learned to be "provocative" and "contrarian"
October 9th, 2023 at 12:29 AM ^
Man, some of these guys seem clueless, so many of them have OSU and FSU ahead of us, both those teams seem shaky for long periods during their games, SMH.
We have one penalty in 2 games and look as efficient as can be, lmao at those morons.
October 9th, 2023 at 1:12 AM ^
We have one penalty in 2 games and look as efficient as can be, lmao at those morons.
Love this stat. This represents discipline, thus coaching. Pretty amazing.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:07 AM ^
It also represents that Mich hasn't played OSU, where they'll inexplicably be "undisciplined" with 8+ penalties.
October 9th, 2023 at 11:21 AM ^
I'm wondering what game Randy Johnson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune was watching Saturday night, because it clearly wasn't his own local team.
October 9th, 2023 at 12:33 AM ^
I assume Chris Murray’s vote is some sort of “you were mean to my boy Cade, so no soup for you” thing. I can find a case for any of those teams, individually, being above Michigan, but not for all of them — because the cases are different. :)
October 9th, 2023 at 1:15 AM ^
Fine. But, does he have to be this obvious? He looks like an irrational moron in the process.
Why not just put Iowa in the top 10 while he's at it.
October 9th, 2023 at 1:05 AM ^
Some folks don't seem to take their votes very seriously huh?
October 9th, 2023 at 1:10 AM ^
Clearly, the evidence shows the AP should throw out the low and the high for each team just like voting in other political sports competitions.
October 9th, 2023 at 1:13 AM ^
For some reason, the AP Poll gets more respect than the Coaches Poll, and I've never understood why. A lot of these AP voters are just beat-level journalists -- they're publishing narrative versions of box scores and edited transcripts of press conferences, not analysis. And some of the AP voters purposely make stupid, outlier picks to bait clicks for their article on their ballot.
At least with the Coaches Poll, the voters have an advanced understanding of football (yes, I'm aware that it's assistants/staff, not the actual coaches, who do the voting, but those assistants/staff still have better football knowledge than Matt Baker and Co.)
October 9th, 2023 at 1:23 AM ^
See 1997 Coaches Poll.
That's all.
October 9th, 2023 at 10:28 AM ^
Fulmer wasn't a coach he was a warden.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:16 PM ^
Fair point, and I agree that bias issues can arise when the poll is actually important to determining a champion or playoff participants. But that hasn't been the case for nearly a decade now, and I stand by my argument that the Coaches Poll is the better ranking on a week to week basis.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:32 AM ^
The coaches poll should be called the grad assistant poll. I haven't given credence to that poll in decades.
October 9th, 2023 at 7:06 AM ^
The AP has its flaws, but the big advantage that its members watch - or are supposed to watch - multiple teams play per week, while that's not possible for the coaches (or the grad assistants who vote in their place).
October 9th, 2023 at 3:14 PM ^
I really doubt that's how it actually goes, though. Most of the voters are beat reporters, not national reporters. They cover one team, watch that one team's game, and spend the rest of the Saturday attending the post-game press conferences and writing their recap. And again, they aren't analysts.
October 9th, 2023 at 1:14 AM ^
Matt Baker is either making a point that no one understands or dumb as hell.
October 9th, 2023 at 2:46 AM ^
I assume the point is that he thinks a win in South Bend is the most impressive win of the season by an undefeated team.
I'm not saying that I agree, but it's either that or "having the best wide receiver in the country counts for 50 ranking points" or something. :)
October 9th, 2023 at 7:52 AM ^
OSU is mostly a one-trick poney. Their running game is the worst I've seen them field in several decades. If they can't get the ball to Harrison or Egbuka, they're in a heap of trouble. McCord jas looked very shaky at times. Their defense is ok, but not elite. Not the #3 team in the country bottom line.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:25 AM ^
But by that logic he should have Louisville ranked much higher than like 15 or whatever he has them.
He’s probably just a dipwad.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:18 AM ^
We talk a lot about whether or not the AP is supposed to be the best teams or the best résumé -- but when people talk about résumé, it's either wins and losses or the eye test. I thought one way to bridge the two might be to sum the postgame win expectancies of the various top teams and see which was most dominant against their schedule. I took everybody with a plausible shot at the top ten plus every undefeated team that wasn't otherwise included.
Using the advanced box scores at collegefootballdata.com, here's what I get, formatted as a win-loss record to two decimal places, and sorted by fewest losses. Note that I sincerely thought about reformatted this as "you'll never believe" clickbait, but, well, just put in a picture in your mind about who you think the most dominant team, relative to their schedule has been, and then see if you're right.
Air Force: 5.00 - 0.00. (Yeah, I didn't see that one coming either. :).
Michigan: 5.99 - 0.01. (The one game where they "only" had a 99% win probability was, for some reason, Nebraska).
Oregon: 4.90 - 0.10
Georgia: 5.89 - 0.11
Liberty: 4.82 - 0.18
Washington: 4.76 - 0.24
Louisville: 5.57 - 0.43 (The Jeff Brohm effect?)
PSU: 4.51* - 0.49. I'm assigning them a 100% win probability vs. WVU, as the site seems broken for that game. They had a 51% win probability vs. Illinois (!).
Oklahoma: 5.50 - 0.50 (Coin flip vs. Texas)
UNC: 4.33 - 0.67
OSU: 4.02 - 0.98. (They had a 4% chance to win the Notre Dame game. Ohio against the world!)
FSU: 3.98 - 1.02. (They only had a 38% chance to beat Clemson and a 60% chance to beat BC)
Texas: 4.96 - 1.04.
Alabama: 4.94 - 1.06
James Madison: 3.91 - 1.09
USC: 4.85 - 1.15
Notre Dame: 5.57 - 1.43 (Louisville was not a fluke)
As an aside: Air Force is 28th in the AP and 36th in SP+. We may think Michigan hasn't had much of a challenge, but AFA really ain't played anybody. :)
October 9th, 2023 at 6:45 AM ^
Surprised UNC is so high considering they went to OT against Appalachian State.
October 9th, 2023 at 10:59 AM ^
They had a 100% expectancy, or near to it, in every game except App State.
October 9th, 2023 at 5:12 AM ^
What’s truly concerning is the thought that the national championship was decided by yahoos like this expressing their opinion or coaches who hold grudges until the BCS came along. How many national champs were just products of playing crappy schedules and beating all their teams and winning an easy bowl game?
October 9th, 2023 at 6:16 AM ^
Before the "Bowl Coalition" or "Bowl Alliance" days, I'm gonna say most of them. Especially in the days where 5 or 6 teams were making a claim based on one specious ranking or another.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:56 AM ^
That’s like half of Miami’s MNCs. They would play FSU and one or two other good nonconference opponents, then a conference schedule about as challenging as the Big Ten West, and then have a literal home game in the Orange Bowl.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:27 AM ^
Jon Wilner with USC at #15 looks about right.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:59 AM ^
btw thanks for this, it's nicely done.
I think Brian/Seth should get like 30 bloggers together and do a poll; it would be better than this one or the coaches's poll, by a lot.
October 9th, 2023 at 7:03 AM ^
There used to be a bloggers poll. I forget how long it ran for but it was definitely around in the late Carr to Rich Rod years.
October 9th, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
Brian literally created this thing with the participating of many others several years (over a decade) ago. It was called the Blogpoll.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:10 AM ^
Way too early to worry about polls and rankings and taking offense. It will all be sorted out out in November.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:16 AM ^
On a bit of a tangent… the “division - less” ACC could have three undefeated teams at the end of conference play.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:34 AM ^
Honestly that's right. Some teams have played people, some haven't really. I can see just about all the schools in the top 10 being thought of as number 1 right now. It'll sort itself out.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:58 AM ^
Chris Murray meant to watch the games but took a wrong turn and ended up at the slot machines, where he lost.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:10 AM ^
Rece Davis....ESPN is rubbing off on ya. #3 behind FSU? Really?
October 9th, 2023 at 9:27 AM ^
He had Michigan #1 earlier in the year too.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:29 AM ^
Couple observations:
For the Minneapolis Star Tribune guy - I did the research - the last time a team came to your town and hung 52 was 2010 - Ohio.
I've been a San Diego Union Tribune subscriber for nearly 30 years. Never heard of Kirk Kenney. But thanks for putting us #1 dude. Not gonna argue.
October 9th, 2023 at 10:19 AM ^
I don't get it with Florida State. They've beaten one ranked team (22), and they should have lost to a Boston College team that may be the worst in the P5. I'll accept them in the top 10 because they're undefeated, but they don't belong in the top 5, much less the top 1 or 2. Why does every single voter have them above an Oklahoma team that beat Texas and hamblasted everyone else on their schedule?
October 9th, 2023 at 11:15 AM ^
The FSU love is one I don't completely get. They beat an LSU team that has since played close games against Arkansas, Mizzou and Ole Miss - winning two - and other than that, FSU's resume is beating an unranked Clemson and winning a clsoe game against BC - one of the worst teams in P5. I think they'll lose to UNC, frankly.
Before last weekend UGA skepticism was fair. M and UGA are playing real well, I think OU, arguably Texas, and Oregon probably have better resumes than both as of today. I don't think anyone has been as dominant as M and Washington. OSU has arguably played a tougher schedule to this point as well - Maryland and ND are both fringe-top25 teams. Nevertheless, none of those schools has been in a close game with a bad team - they've all met expectations of a top 5/10 team, along with Penn State. Ranking any of them in any order is defensible. I think some look better than others but I wouldn't be shocked if any of them beat any of the others.
But FSU has not looked the part of a top 5 team. Don't think they deserve to be there. Them and USC can bring up the rear of the top 10.
October 9th, 2023 at 12:33 PM ^
Objectively hilarious that the guy from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune put us 4th. I guess he didn't see the game?...
October 9th, 2023 at 1:16 PM ^
Only explanation for outliers, other than anti Mich. bias,is "I vote based on who you've beat rather than what my eyeballs show me."