College Football Rankings: LSU Atop Week 6 BlogPoll, Wisconsin And Clemson Rising

LSU and Alabama have risen to the top of the college football rankings. But both SEC leviathans have been at the top of the 2011 BlogPoll, which has the Tigers and Crimson Tide 1-2 for the second consecutive week in its Week 6 iteration.

The Tigers take the No. 1 spot in the BlogPoll for the third week in the 2011 season, and become the first team to hold the No. 1 spot in the BlogPoll for consecutive weeks in 2011. But LSU, which walloped low-profile Kentucky in Week 5, lost a significant amount of ground to Alabama, fresh off a dominant win at Florida: the Tigers had more than a point per blog on the Tide last week, but that margin has been shaved to just more than a third of a point per blog in Week 6. The Tigers may well rebuild their lead in Week 6, when Florida, still ranked, comes to Baton Rouge with a freshman quarterback at the helm.

More importantly, both SEC schools have opened a big gap on Oklahoma, which looked like part of a tight top three last week. And Wisconsin, which earned a first-place voter after dismantling Nebraska, is even further behind.

Elsewhere, Clemson enters the top 10 at No. 8, Oregon re-enters the top 10 at No. 9, a slew of teams move from the lower teens to the top 15 because of losses, Auburn jumps all the way to No. 18 from the realm of the unranked, and Michigan State garners enough votes to rejoin the BlogPoll Top 25 after a 10-7 win over punchless Ohio State. Good times.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

SpartyMSU’s ballot is not quite as insane as I hope it is on a weekly basis, but it does finally move Florida State out of the top 10 — after the Seminoles failed to run up the score on Bye Week, no doubt.

Now on to the extracurriculars. First up are the teams which spur the most disagreement between voters as measured by standard deviation. Note that the standard deviation charts halt at No. 25 when looking for the lowest, otherwise teams that everyone agreed were terrible (say, Minnesota) would all be at the top.

Kansas State, which really only popped onto the national radar after pipping Baylor on Saturday, takes the top spot by edging Illinois, which claims as its best win a triumph over Arizona State. It’s no coincidence that all of the teams in this table are in a 12-team lower echelon rather than the 13-team higher echelon.

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.

I feel like you probably understand why resume balloting produces standard error by now. Black Heart Gold Pants still has Michigan in the top four, while Michigan is seventh and Texas Tech is 14th in Frogs O’ War’s ballot.

Baltimore Sports Report’s first deviation from the composite BlogPoll is at No. 10, where BSR has Arkansas and the BlogPoll has Georgia Tech.

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.

SB Nation Atlanta’s ballot is technically a composite ballot from a few different contributors, but they actually ranked Georgia Tech 10th one week after ranking them 15th and still winning this award, so this really has more to do with the Yellow Jackets moving up a bit more slowly than the Atlanta folks are elevating them.

Virginia Tech is 25th on The Key Play’s ballot. Dropping your own team 14 spots will get you this award on a fairly reliable basis.

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.

EXTRA EXTRA: A voter has topped the two most notable and strenuous resume ballot voters for most swing. (It’s because Corn Nation dropped four teams eight spots or more, and then bumped up 10 teams two spots or more to take their places.)

Voodoo Five kept its top seven the same, did some shuffling in the teens, and then left much of the back end of its ballot the same. Replacing only two teams in its ballot helped, too.