ESPN Traditions Poll Semi-final Ends Today
For those of you who haven't been following this over the last week, it has been quite funny.
I think it started out honestly for the most part. On the first day both schools were neck-and-neck with high voter participation. Then over night Nebraska jumped out to a million vote lead. It was obvious that they had some kind of automated voting "bot" working on their behalf.
It didn't take long before Michigan's computer folks retook the lead. Surging to a 7 million vote margin and a 72% to 28% lead.
Well as the poll is set to close today at noon the Husker "bots" are working hard to claim the victory. 7 hours ago the Michigan lead had slipped to 70%/30%. 4 hours ago it was 67%/33%. 2 hours ago it was 65%/35%. Now it's 61%/39% with over 14 million votes cast and about 4 hours to go.
If you would like to track the battle of the "bots", check out the site.
http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/post/_/id/6711772/11-michigan-vs-15-nebraska
This kinda puts a 6-inch taint on the whole thing. It's disappointing that it has come to this - even if we are cheating just to counter their cheating.
But our cheaters are proving better than their cheaters. And with FSU apparently doing the same thing against ND, it makes it less likely that ESPN disqualifies anyone.
Any ESPN disqualifications at this point would have to include us, Neb, and FSU, effectively declaring ND the winners. And with all the resentment that everyone already has toward Irish favoritism, there's no way they would pull that.
oh god, this is exactly what's going to happen now.
It's 57%-43% now.
Nebraska has made a small dent into our lead as far as absolute votes as well. It's down to about 2.7M. But there is no way they close the rest of the gap in less than a hour.
Every million or so votes certainly makes my rightious indignation over the Kovacs for best safety in the land vote look oh so childlike and innocent now doesn't it?
That got out of hand pretty quickly, but it was absolutely hilarious to watch.
/TWSS
56%-44%
4 million vote lead trimmed to 2.3 million...but only 26 minutes left.
They can't come up with 2 millions votes in 7 minutes. Not worried about FSU, either. They're ND beatdown is inflated by ND's alck of botting. There are only about 2 million total votes in that poll to our 20 million, so I'm confident we can out-bot them.
Well hopefully this is over at noon eastern otherwise we will be in trouble.
Voting still open...
I was just able to vote, not that it matters.
UM vs. FSU
Go vote!
I hope we keep the bots caged until FSU fires the first shot. If they do, let's destroy them.
Michigan men need to get to work on this one n-o-w. No more lollygagging.
There is little chance any sort of disqualification would occur- given the tenuous grasp that most people have on statistics, or numbers in general, whoever is in charge of that poll at ESPN probably won't realize how improbable it is for 20 million people to vote in this poll.
I pretty sure--no, certain--that the people at ESPN know the poll was gamed by fans. Voting bots aren't exactly a secret. When you have 6% of the country voting in a meaningless poll about college football traditions and votes coming in at 100,000+ per hour, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's occurring.
only funny because our bot has a better degree than their bot.
was fun having a friendly little head to head competion right as we officially joined the B1G. I enjoyed reading most of the posts on this board and on the voting site.
Nice little warmup before Nov 19th, should be a great game
Don't the majority of teams do it? Not every teams touches a banner, touches a rock, a sign or follows a mascot across the field. But almost all of them walk out a tunnel.