PEOPLE'S PICK: Bad Voter of Week 2 -- Taylor Zarzour   (posted 9/5/08)

Taylor Zarzour once again wins the "unpopular vote" by a landslide.  That makes two weeks in a row for Zarzour in his inaugural year as a football voter.

To reiterate, the "People's Pick" is only the opinion of visitors of our site.  Pollspeak won't be giving official awards until week four of the season at the earliest.

See Zarzour's week 2 ballot and decide for yourself, but any fans of the four teams he alone ranked lowest could be the main factor:  Ohio State #9, Missouri #15, Auburn #22 or West Virginia - Unranked.

PEOPLE'S PICK: Good Voter of Week 2 -- Matt McCoy   (posted 9/5/08)

Matt McCoy's week 2 ballot received the most net good votes this week from Pollspeak readers.  Again, not necessarily Pollspeak's choice...but the fans have spoken.  Pollspeak will have its say after week 4.

Some may be wondering why Molly Yanity didn't win Good Voter of Week 2.  After all, Pollstalker lists her as the person with the most good votes with 394.  True, but she also received 526 bad votes for a net of 132 bad votes, which actually puts her in third place for Bad Voter of the Week behind Zarzour and Adam Van Brimmer.  Keep in mind we go by NET good votes.  So better luck next week.

Did They See The Game?  (posted 9/3/08)

While it is still too early in the season to look at voter’s ballots in detail, we can at least see if they are following the AP’s basic guidelines.  The easiest ones to check are:

·       Base your vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation.

·       Pay attention to head-to-head results and

·       Don’t hesitate to make significant changes in your ballot from week to week.

Based on those three guidelines and only one game in the books, it’s clear that a team should be ranked higher than the team they beat in week one.  We understand that flukes happen.  Maybe, for example, Tennessee would beat UCLA 9 out of 10 times in one voter’s opinion.  However, we only have one game to base decisions on right now, and Tennessee lost.  So using the AP guidelines, UCLA should be ranked higher (this week).  Unfortunately, these guidelines aren’t always followed.  A list of offenders is below.

(Coaches’, since we can’t see your ballots through your veil of secrecy, please do a self check for these same issues…thank you.)

Maurice Patton and Mike Ceide ignored the guidelines three times in one week!  Guys, in the future, please pay better attention to the scores or to the guidelines sent by the AP.

By the way, if you want to check for these issues yourself, try using Pollstalker's Team Comparison Feature.  Just pick two teams to compare and run the report.  Click here for an example.