A relatively tranquil week with Iowa’s loss to Arizona the main souhce of big moves; the two teams nearly swap places. Nevada and Michigan State surge through the “others receiving votes” section to grab on at the tail end of the poll, Stanford and Arkansas slide up after crushing weaklings and notching a quality win, respectively, and everything else pretty much stays the same.
College Football BlogPoll Top 25, Week 4: Raising Arizona
A relatively tranquil week sees Arizona and Iowa nearly swap spots; Wisconsin is punished for a skin-of-its-PAT-block escape and Stanford rewarded for beating the demon out of the Deacons. Plus: people still voting for Virginia Tech!
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We are seeing some strange No. 1 votes pop up, with Oregon, TCU, Oklahoma, and Stanford gathering No. 1’s; one dollar our wackiest wack voter is the Stanford proponent after the Cardinal laid waste to Wake Forest this weekend.
In any case, the poll:
Results for Week 4
2
-2Total Ballots: 104
On with the bonus stuff:
Justify Your Existence
The BlogPoll loves:
- No. 3 Oregon (No. 5 AP, No. 6 coaches)
- No. 11 Arizona (No. 14 AP, No. 16 coaches)
- No. 12 South Carolina (No. 15 coaches)
- No. 13 Stanford No. 16 AP, No. 17 coaches)
- No. 24 Nevada (UR)
The BlogPoll hates:
- No. 5 Boise State (No. 3 both other polls)
- No. 7 Texas (No. 4 coaches)
- No. 15 Wisconsin (No. 10 coaches, No. 11 AP)
- No. 16 LSU (No. 12 coaches, No. 15 AP)
Looks good to me, as it pays attention to Oregon’s demolition, VT’s implosion, and how good Stanford looks while taking Texas’s iffy play and Wisconsin’s narrow escape into account. This is why the resume guys are fine in aggregate: they make the poll more responsive to early season events.
Wack Ballot Watchdog
- I guess this counts as progress: we’re down to three inexplicable Virginia Tech votes instead of last week’s five. Georgia, now 0-2 in the SEC, is hanging on to two votes, as is Houston.
- Frank Helps You Think It All Out has USC No. 8, three spots higher than the next most enthusiastic Trojan voter.
- Random single votes: USF’s win over Stony Brook, demolition at the hands of Florida, and bye is enough for Shakin’ The Southland to drop the Bulls in at No. 22. BYU is still feeling the love from Orange:44.
- Frank The Tank’s Slant (not a good week for the Franks) has Oregon State, not Oregon, No. 4 in what must be a ballot typo.
- In what must be a first for the universe, Red Cup Rebellion’s ballot features Temple No. 17 and Oregon No. 18. The next most pessimistic on Oregon has them No. 13.
- What’s with three voters having Oklahoma State (Ws: WSU, Troy by three, Tulsa) No. 11?
- Cal gets votes at No. 16 and No. 20 from Hey Jenny Slater and Cowboys Ride For Free; the latter doesn’t even bother to rank Nevada.
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.
| # | School | Points/blog | SD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona Wildcats | 13.3 | 5.04 |
| 2 | LSU Tigers | 11.0 | 4.63 |
| 3 | Utah Utes | 11.9 | 4.52 |
| 4 | Miami Hurricanes | 6.1 | 4.49 |
| 5 | Wisconsin Badgers | 11.6 | 4.38 |
Michigan falls from #1 here out of the top five after their weak performance against I-AA UMass and losses from UConn and Notre Dame pushed them well down in the eyes of the resume folk. Your new champion is Arizona. With votes ranging from No. 2 to No. 25 it’s no wonder.
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.
Mr. Bold
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Avg Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Heart Gold Pants | Iowa Hawkeyes | ballot | 6.22 |
| 2 | Boys of Old Florida | Florida Gators | ballot | 6.19 |
| 3 | The Purple Wimple | TCU Horned Frogs | ballot | 5.93 |
| 4 | Red Cup Rebellion | Mississippi Rebels | ballot | 5.82 |
| 5 | SB Nation Atlanta | Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets | ballot | 4.82 |
Reader, you owe me a dollar. BHGP and their approach to voting, which is like resume voting except integrated (in a calculus way, not a segregation way), spends the first month of the season merrily voting whichever team has bludgeoned weak opposition #1 since all they pay attention to is margin of victory. This week that approach sees Stanford—which admittedly obliterated Wake Forest and saw their 35-0 win over UCLA pick up considerably more cachet after the Bruins clobbered Houston—leap to No. 1. Since they’re No. 13 in the poll at large this is a great start towards having the weirdest ballot in all the land, and for the second straight week BHGP takes it home.
This week it’s close, at least. Maybe we’ll start to get some variety in the top finishers here; IIRC the top four here have been constant since the season started.
Mr. Numb Existence
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Avg Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baltimore Sports Report | Maryland Terrapins | ballot | 0.98 |
| 2 | The Key Play | Virginia Tech Hokies | ballot | 1.65 |
| 3 | Eleven Warriors | Ohio State Buckeyes | ballot | 1.71 |
| 4 | Hog Database | Arkansas Razorbacks | ballot | 1.77 |
| 5 | The Only Colors | Michigan St. Spartans | ballot | 1.85 |
The Baltimore Sports Report is also a repeat winner here, following up an impressively low error with an even more impressively low error, sliding under 1 in the third week of the season. Quest For The Perfect Ballot ends at 3, though, where TCU flips with Oregon.
Next we have the Coulter/Kos 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 a shameless home. A low number indicates that you suffer from an abusive relationship with your football team.
The CK Award
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Bias |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mountain West Connection | Utah Utes | ballot | 6.08 |
| 2 | Hog Database | Arkansas Razorbacks | ballot | 2.11 |
| 3 | Corn Nation | Nebraska Cornhuskers | ballot | 1.48 |
| 4 | The Owl's Nest | Temple Owls | ballot | 0.71 |
| 5 | Boys of Old Florida | Florida Gators | ballot | 0.49 |
This week The CK Award had its most Vegas outing ever, as last week’s winner was USC, a 13 point favorite over Minnesota on Wednesday but only 11.5-point favorites at kickoff. USC proceeded to struggle, falling behind for eight seconds in the second half. They then failed to cover because Lane Kiffin went for two (for no reason) three times, going 0-fer in the process and turning a spread-covering two-touchdown win into a decidedly not spread-covering 11-point win.
If you were wondering what that was all about during the game, now you know: TrojanWire voted USC too high last week. The CK award is now 3-0 against the spread this year, 1-2 straight up in trying circumstances.
This weeks whammy falls to Utah. The Mountain West Connection has them No. 8, thus exposing them to the terrible trials of the CK Award in the game against...aww, come on...San Jose State. Utah is a 32-point favorit. Can’t anyone overrate their team the week they have a real game?
The Straight Bangin’ Award
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Bias |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Purple Wimple | TCU Horned Frogs | ballot | -12.66 |
| 2 | Black Heart Gold Pants | Iowa Hawkeyes | ballot | -6.52 |
| 3 | SpartyMSU | Michigan St. Spartans | ballot | -1.54 |
| 4 | Tomahawk Nation | Florida State Seminoles | ballot | -0.60 |
| 5 | Block-C | Clemson Tigers | ballot | -0.57 |
I’ve pretty much given up on any attempts to figure out what moves The Purple Wimple to vote the way it does, but they have TCU 18th. They are up 4 after last week, for what it’s worth. Boise is 13th despite Oregon State being a much better win than Virginia Tech right now. The man is a walking wach ballot.
Swing is the total change in each ballot from last week to the week (oviously 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.
Mr. Manic Depressive
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Swing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Heart Gold Pants | Iowa Hawkeyes | ballot | 254 |
| 2 | Boys of Old Florida | Florida Gators | ballot | 212 |
| 3 | The Purple Wimple | TCU Horned Frogs | ballot | 208 |
| 4 | Red Cup Rebellion | Mississippi Rebels | ballot | 194 |
| 5 | Tom Fornelli | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | ballot | 134 |
WOO RIDICULOUS MOV VOTING THAT REQUIRES WINNING THIS AWARD JUST TO GET WITHIN HAILING DISTANCE OF THE SECOND CRAZIEST BALLOT IN THE POLL WOO
Mr. Xanax
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Swing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Owl's Nest | Temple Owls | ballot | 32 |
| 2 | Voodoo Five | South Florida Bulls | ballot | 50 |
| 3 | OverThePylon | Ball St. Cardinals | ballot | 52 |
| 4 | The Key Play | Virginia Tech Hokies | ballot | 64 |
| 5 | SpartyMSU | Michigan St. Spartans | ballot | 66 |
Week 3 makes The Owl’s Nest feel goooooooood, as the only major changes on its ballot are moving Iowa down and Arizona up after Arizona’s win. The bottom of the poll also shuffles Michigan State and...yup...Temple, the latter after Temple basically did what Michigan did to UConn, greatly displeasing both of the BCS schools.
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