cartman's FOFC College Football Top 25 Poll, Week 3 results

[cartman]

Here's how the voting shook out:

Team			Votes	Prev	Weekend Opponent
1. Ohio State		259	2	Bye
2. Alabama (6)		257	1	vs. Kent State
3. Louisville (4)	251	6	at Marshall
4. Michigan		231	3	vs. Penn State
5. Houston		221	7	at Texas State
6. Stanford (1)		207	8	at UCLA
7. Clemson		185	5	at #24 Georgia Tech
8. Washington		176	9	at Arizona
9. Wisconsin		166	T12	at #10 Michigan State
10. Michigan State	144	T12	vs. #9 Wisconsin
11. Baylor		127	16	vs.  Oklahoma State
12. Florida State	126	4	at #23 South Florida
13. Texas A&M		122	19	vs. #18 Arkansas
14. Nebraska		115	22	at Northwestern
15. Georgia		112	15	at Mississippi
16. Miami (FL)		107	NR	Bye
17. Tennessee		102	14	vs. #19 Florida
18. Arkansas		85	24	at #13 Texas A&M
19. Florida		61	NR	at #17 Tennessee
20. Utah		57	NR	 vs. USC
21. Boise State		55	25	at Oregon State
22. LSU			48	23	at Auburn
23. South Florida	41	NR	vs. #12 Florida State
24. Georgia Tech	29	NR	vs. #7 Clemson
25. San Diego State	26	NR	Bye

Dropped out:
#10 Iowa, #11 Texas, #17 Oklahoma, #18 Notre Dame, #20 Mississippi, #21 Oregon

Also receiving votes:
Iowa 25,Toledo 22,Central Michigan 20,Oklahoma 19,Army 19,Western Michigan 18,
Mississippi 17,North Carolina 15,Kansas State 15,Oregon 14,TCU 13,
Arizona State 11,Texas 10,Maryland 10,Colorado 7,California 7,West Virginia 7,
UCLA 6,North Dakota State 5,Oklahoma State 3,Minnesota 1,Georgia Southern 1

Thanks to the following FOFCers for voting this week:

britrock88
Butter
cartman
CU Tiger
Easy Mac
General Mike
JonInMiddleGA
molson
Solecismic's Football Frontier
tarcone
Umbrella

[JonInMiddleGA]

Am I reading this right? That the collective FOFC wisdom combined to place Ohio State #1 without a single first place vote?

[tarcone]

That is pretty crazy

[molson]

It's a pretty small sample size, so the one voter who had Alabama down at #11 pushed them out of the top spot, since everyone had Ohio State in their top 3, except one voter who had them at #6.

[cartman]

Yeah, I noticed that as well and had to double check. Ohio State was 2nd or 3rd on every submission, while Alabama was 11th on one and 4th on another.

[JonInMiddleGA]

At some point maybe a standard higher than throwing names into a hat & drawing them randomly MAY need to be considered.

After looking back at the poll in question, I'm not sure whether I'll bother contributing any longer. Including that one pretty much feels to me like it invalidates this one.

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

At some point maybe a standard higher than throwing names into a hat & drawing them randomly MAY need to be considered.

After looking back at the poll in question, I'm not sure whether I'll bother contributing any longer. Including that one pretty much feels to me like it invalidates this one.

I had this thought after the 1st posting of a poll last week. I was thinking what is the point. It is the same problem Ive had for a couple seasons. But it is getting tiresome.
I may discontinue my contribution as well.

[molson]

Eh, there's really nothing riding on the result of this poll, it's just a fun exercise, it doesn't matter to me if there's some wonky results. I take part just because it's kind of a nice diversion to recap what happened in college football the week before. It's a little crutch to help me make some time to catch up how the season's going.

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by molson

Eh, there's really nothing riding on the result of this poll, it's just a fun exercise, it doesn't matter to me if there's some wonky results. I take part just because it's kind of a nice diversion to recap what happened in college football the week before. It's a little crutch to help me make some time to catch up how the season's going.

And to be wishy washy, this is also how I feel.

I know. It doesnt make sense. But seeing Texas St. ranked 6th just blows my mind.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

Eh, there's really nothing riding on the result of this poll, it's just a fun exercise, it doesn't matter to me if there's some wonky results. I take part just because it's kind of a nice diversion to recap what happened in college football the week before. It's a little crutch to help me make some time to catch up how the season's going.

I get the keep up/catch up aspect of it. I was doing my Top 25 on the blog before (or as?) this began here IIRC, I'll be doing one afterwards. I take it seriously, same as I did when I was doing it "for real", typically several hours a week goes into it for me & that's not counting the mental processing of the next one throughout game day.

I'm just not feeling the point of even reformatting a copy-and-paste job after really looking closely (which I'd tried to avoid) at what else it's being thrown in with, not when it's as aggregious as the current example.

{shrug} That's my issue, not anybody else's. Ain't mad or nothing, just figure it's time to leave it with whomever has more patience than I do. Disappointed is probably a fair word, but nowhere near mad.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by tarcone

I had this thought after the 1st posting of a poll last week. I was thinking what is the point. It is the same problem Ive had for a couple seasons. But it is getting tiresome.
I may discontinue my contribution as well.

I have assumed its one of those statistical based rankings that is accurate when looked at retroactively for an entire season but meaningless in season until 100% of the data is available.

[molson]

Ya, there's a million ways to rank teams in the first few weeks - so much of it is still pre-season expectations v. what they've actually done in the first few weeks. There's no right answer on how to balance those things. I remember one voter in this poll a few years ago would never rank an undefeated team below a team with a loss. So you had some weird early season polls, and smaller schools ranked high after going 6-0. But that's as valid a voting theory as any other, that's kind of the point, to combine the different theories and see what the average of them is. I feel the same about HOF voting. People have different theories about how much character, winning, MVP awards, traditional stats, modern sabermetrics should balance against each other, and there's no wrong answer, if you have a vote, your theory counts as much as every other one.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

There's no right answer on how to balance those things.

There are, however, reasonable boundaries in which those things fit.

What I saw this week looked like fucking picking teams out of a hat. It's insulting, frankly, literally making a joke of the entire exercise.

{shrug} Life goes on, but it sucks to have something I've done for years destroyed by someone treating it like a damned joke.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm so old that I remember when 400 yards of offense was a really big day.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by molson

Ya, there's a million ways to rank teams in the first few weeks - so much of it is still pre-season expectations v. what they've actually done in the first few weeks. There's no right answer on how to balance those things. I remember one voter in this poll a few years ago would never rank an undefeated team below a team with a loss. So you had some weird early season polls, and smaller schools ranked high after going 6-0. But that's as valid a voting theory as any other, that's kind of the point, to combine the different theories and see what the average of them is. I feel the same about HOF voting. People have different theories about how much character, winning, MVP awards, traditional stats, modern sabermetrics should balance against each other, and there's no wrong answer, if you have a vote, your theory counts as much as every other one.

But there are outliers.
Army 7?
Toledo 8?
Clemson unranked?

With such a small sample pool, you allow one person to dictate the results a bit.

HOF is a bad comp because if enough say ye the fact that someone else says never has no bearing.

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

it sucks to have something I've done for years destroyed by someone treating it like a damned joke.

That's just the thing, though. Nothing about anyone else's poll changes yours. The diversity in the rankings that people produce should be a good impetus to spark conversation about how to rank teams, not to take offense, take one's ball, and go home.

[cuervo72]

Don't actual voters pull stuff like that every now and then?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by britrock88

That's just the thing, though. Nothing about anyone else's poll changes yours. The diversity in the rankings that people produce should be a good impetus to spark conversation about how to rank teams, not to take offense, take one's ball, and go home.

But, as pointed out, the small sample size gives undue weight to extreme outliers. And, frankly, such extreme outliers aren't worth conversation, not when they're so completely fucking inane to be worth wasting oxygen on.

Life goes on, everybody will be just fine.

And my polls will be, as always, at Jon's Three Cents | Because two cents worth isn't always enough

[Easy Mac]

You can leave out my poll if you want, since people seem to think the fate of the world rides on the results. I'll more than admit im working throught the bugs in my math and am not happy with the results, but I feel like it will accurately reflect what's going on as the results come in.

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

You can leave out my poll if you want, since people seem to think the fate of the world rides on the results. I'll more than admit im working throught the bugs in my math and am not happy with the results, but I feel like it will accurately reflect what's going on as the results come in.

What math do you use?

I wonder with Army and Toledo placing so highly.
Because no math should have done that.

[Easy Mac]

The same math where most of the board who votes had FSU top 3 before the previous week and Louisville not in their top 10.

[tarcone]

So, in your opinion, Toledo and Army are better teams than Alabama?

Im curious about what you use to determine your poll. Im not trying to be an ass. Though I usually excel at that.