After TCU beat Wisconsin the question was always going to be “how many protest votes do the Horned Frogs get?” and your answer is… six. Not bad. With Auburn an obvious #1 that makes TCU #2. Oregon barely falls after losing on a last-gasp drive and the rest of the poll falls into place about as you expect.
Year-End College Football BlogPoll Rankings: Auburn On Top, Big East Nowhere To Be Found
Auburn takes home the fake blog national title but we’ve got more mavericks per capita than anywhere else because we’re from the wild and wooly internet. Such is the end of the year.
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Your most humiliated conference is officially the Big East, which landed zero teams in the final poll, behind the Mountain West, Conference USA, and the WAC. As a reward for those conferences all of their good teams will be carved up and placed in BCS conferences save lonely Nevada and Boise State.
The full results:
Results for Week 16
1
-1Total Ballots: 48
Justify Your Existence
Um… there isn’t any this week. Aside from having NC State a couple slots higher the only differences between this poll and the Coaches are more protest TCU votes and a swap of Utah and NC State.
Wack Ballot Watchdog
- Linebacker U ranks VT 22nd, four spots lower than the next most pessimistic voter.
- Tomahawk Nation’s mid-major skepticism will not be stopped even by a Rose Bowl win: they rank TCU 7th. Oregon also falls to ninth, which come on.
- Conquest Chronicles ranked Arkansas 19th, five slots lower than the NMPV.
- Even more come on: Northern Illinois at No. 16 according to Double T Nation. Even even more: same blog ranked Miami (not that Miami) 17th.
- From The Rumble Seat dropped Michigan State one spot to seventh after they were obliterated by Alabama. Alabama? 17th. Down a spot.
- Only nine people even voted for SDSU but one of them—Bull Run—put them 15th.
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.
Most Disagreement
| # | School | Points/blog | SD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boise St. Broncos | 17.56 | 3.37 |
| 2 | Michigan St. Spartans | 10.54 | 3.34 |
| 3 | South Carolina Gamecocks | 3.35 | 3.15 |
| 4 | Texas A&M Aggies | 6.06 | 3.09 |
| 5 | Nevada Wolf Pack | 14.31 | 3.05 |
As per usual the mid-major du jour is king of this 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.
Mr. Bold
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Avg Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rise Northwestern | Northwestern Wildcats | ballot | 2.51 |
| 2 | Clone Chronicles | Iowa St. Cyclones | ballot | 2.42 |
| 3 | Dawg Sports | Georgia Bulldogs | ballot | 2.16 |
| 4 | NittanyWhiteOut | Penn St. Nittany Lions | ballot | 2.09 |
| 5 | Hammer & Rails | Purdue Boilermakers | ballot | 2.08 |
Your most bizarre ballot belongs to Rise Northwestern, which went SEC nuts after the bowls. LSU(!?!) shoots up to #4 after the Cotton Bowl, ahead of even Stanford and Ohio State. Alabama shoots up to eighth as well, but that only gets them into a more reasonable time zone. It’s the back end where things get truly odd: three Big East teams including #20 UConn and #21 Pitt. Wisconsin falls to #11, as well, which is harsh.
Mr. Numb Existence
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Avg Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SOX & Dawgs | Connecticut Huskies | ballot | 0.70 |
| 2 | BCS Know How | USC Trojans | ballot | 0.91 |
| 3 | Team Speed Kills | South Carolina Gamecocks | ballot | 0.95 |
| 4 | Streaking the Lawn | Virginia Cavaliers | ballot | 1.02 |
| 5 | Corn Nation | Nebraska Cornhuskers | ballot | 1.16 |
Sox & Dawgs turns in a truly epic ballot that has a season-low in error, as per usual when it comes to the year end, but only gets to #6 before our perfect ballot quest ends without a 2010 winner. Boise slides up above their #8 placement in the poll at large.
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 shameless homer. A low number indicates that you suffer from an abusive relationship with your football team.
The CK Award
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Bias |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Subway Domer | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | ballot | 4.19 |
| 2 | Block U | Utah Utes | ballot | 3.13 |
| 3 | Crimson and Cream Machine | Oklahoma Sooners | ballot | 2.33 |
| 4 | Team Speed Kills | South Carolina Gamecocks | ballot | 1.65 |
| 5 | Mountain West Connection | Utah Utes | ballot | 0.13 |
Notre Dame doesn’t feature in the poll at all but Subway Domer ranks them 21st after they put it on coachless Miami in their bowl game. This manages to beat out Block U’s unwavering support of Utah.
That unwavering support saw the Utes finish atop this list for seemingly the 100th time this year just before the bowls, and the CK Award rose up for the third time this year as Boise State clubbed them 26-3. They were 17 point favorites, so that’s a win for the award and a final season record of 8-5, most of them Utah games. Let this be a lesson to you, and here’s to Utah going 6-6 next year so we don’t have to do this all over again.
The Straight Bangin’ Award
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Bias |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corn Nation | Nebraska Cornhuskers | ballot | -1.58 |
| 2 | SOX & Dawgs | Connecticut Huskies | ballot | -0.25 |
| 3 | BCS Know How | USC Trojans | ballot | -0.10 |
| 4 | Conquest Chronicles | USC Trojans | ballot | -0.10 |
| 5 | NittanyWhiteOut | Penn St. Nittany Lions | ballot | -0.04 |
The usual formula here is disappointing loss equals win for blog following team and that holds here as the Cornhuskers lost 19-7 to a team they’d turned into a fine paste earlier in the season.
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.
Mr. Manic Depressive
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Swing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crimson and Cream Machine | Oklahoma Sooners | ballot | 126 |
| 2 | The Crimson Quarry | Indiana Hoosiers | ballot | 116 |
| 3 | OverThePylon | Ball St. Cardinals | ballot | 112 |
| 4 | Block U | Utah Utes | ballot | 110 |
| 5 | Corn Nation | Nebraska Cornhuskers | ballot | 106 |
Crimson and Cream Machine is your victor here thanks in (very) small part to having Auburn third before the national title game. Nothing on his ballot leaps out as irrational, but he moves almost everyone multiple spots and chucked Big 12 losers way down the list—Nebraska, A&M, and Mizzou average an eight slot drop.
Mr. Xanax
| # | Blog | Team | Ballot | Swing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BCS Know How | USC Trojans | ballot | 72 |
| 2 | Fight For Iowa | Iowa Hawkeyes | ballot | 74 |
| 3 | BC Interruption | Boston College Eagles | ballot | 82 |
| 4 | Falcon Blog | Bowling Green Falcons | ballot | 82 |
| 5 | Card Chronicle | Louisville Cardinals | ballot | 84 |
By contrast, BCS Know How’s ballot is filled with gentle soothing moves like “Michigan State down 3 after getting disemboweled” and “ditto Utah except only two spots.”
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