College Football Rankings: BlogPoll Has Oklahoma At No. 1; Clemson Surges To No. 19

Oklahoma rode its victory over Florida State to the top of the blogosphere’s college football rankings, taking the No. 1 position from Alabama in the Week 4 BlogPoll. The Sooners’ 23-13 win in Tallahassee was enough to garner the most first-place votes and highest average ranking for a team in the 2011 season so far.

The Seminoles took the biggest fall for a top-10 team in the Week 4 BlogPoll, tumbling six spots to No. 12, one rung below Oregon, another team with a loss to a top-three school.

New BlogPoll entrants this week include Auburn-killer Clemson, run-happy Georgia Tech, and Ron Zook’s unbeaten Illinois squad, fresh off a win over Arizona State.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

One ballot has Iowa ranked: it’s Linebacker U’s, which has the Hawkeyes 14th. One ballot has Temple ranked: it’s also Linebacker U’s.

Meanwhile, Clemson blog Shakin’ the Southland’s ballot makes no sense: it slots vanquished Auburn foe Mississippi State No. 18 and Auburn vanquisher Clemson (ITS OWN TEAM, MIND YOU) No. 24.

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, Akron) would all be at the top.

Teams that lose big early-season games will always be up here in the early weeks, as voters penalize for losses or judge teams to be as good as expected despite them: that explains both Florida State and Oregon, both ranked as high as fifth in this week’s BlogPoll. (Though one of the ‘Noles’ fifth-place votes comes from Crimson and Cream Machine, it should be noted.

USC, on the other hand, has two narrow wins and a blowout win over a Syracuse team with no claim to being anything more than mediocre. The Trojans earned one fourth-place and one fifth-place vote, but got left off of 37 of the week’s 103 ballots.

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.

Resume balloting strikes again! Black Heart Gold Pants (Michigan No. 4, Florida International ahead of Boise State) and Frogs O’ War (Cal No. 11, San Diego State No. 20) are still significant deviants, though both do rank Oklahoma No. 1. South Carolina third, USC fourth and Florida eighth is enough to earn One Foot Down its first award for the year (as One Foot Down, anyway).

Eleven Warriors ranked one team that didn’t end up in the Week 4 BlogPoll Top 25: Iowa State. And 11W had the Cyclones 25th, while they ended up 26th.

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.

Hog Database has won this award in each week it has submitted a ballot. Impressively consistent homerism, that.

The SB Nation Atlanta ballot belongs to none other than SBNation.com’s Jason Kirk, who neglected to rank Georgia Tech despite the Yellow Jackets’ vivisection of Kansas on Saturday.

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.

Resume balloting strikes again, but the BHGP ballot actually has more swing from Week 3 to Week 4 than it did from Week 2 to Week 3, which suggests an impressive commitment to the methodology.

Some voters dropped Michigan State out of the rankings entirely after the Spartans lost to 0-2 Notre Dame by 18 despite outgaining the Irish by nearly 100 yards. Pistols Firing didn’t.