Check here each week for the latest articles during football season.  Past weeks' football articles can be found using the "Week" menu on the bar above.  The awards are defined on the Awards page.

• Big East: Out of the Polls (posted 9/3/09)
• Leading Good and Bad Voters (posted 8/31/09)
• Ballot Chat With Adam Van Brimmer (posted 8/27/09)
• SI.com To Force Coaches To Make Ballots Public (posted 8/25/08)
• Inside the 2009 Preseason AP Poll  (posted 8/24/09)
• "Week 1" Preseason AP Poll Released  (posted 8/22/09)
• Sagarin and Billingsley Preseason Ratings Released  (posted 8/20/09)
• Inside the 2009 Preseason Coaches' Poll  (posted 8/9/09)
• Preseason Poll Retrospective: Taylor Zarzour (posted 8/5/09)
• AP and Coaches' Preseason Poll Release Dates Announced  (posted 8/4/09)

Big East: Out of the Polls by Sean Altshuler (posted 9/3/09)

Last preseason, Pollspeak published an article:  Non-BCS Teams Suffer From Preseason Bias.  It seems the voters took notice.  There is a record four non-BCS teams now ranked in the preseason top 25 polls. Unfortunately, those rankings needed to come at the expense of other conferences, and this year it was the Big East, which has no teams in the top 25 (also a first).  Are rankings like these fueling the arguments that the Big East should lose its automatic BCS bowl bid, or proving that other conferences should be better represented in the BCS, like the Mountain West has been arguing?

In recent years, the Big East has been viewed by many voters as a weak BCS conference, and this year's AP and Coaches polls are continuing the trend. In the AP top 25, the SEC and Big 12 each have five teams, accounting for forty percent of the entire poll. The ACC has four teams, the Pac 10 has three, and the Big 10 has three.  Both the AP and Coaches’ Poll have zero teams from the Big East, marking the first time the Big East hasn’t been represented in a preseason poll and only the third time since 1991 that the conference has been left out of a poll at any point during the season.

The Big East had twenty seven players drafted by the NFL this offseason, the most per team of any conference in college football. The player losses, along with the departure of big-name coaches like Bobby Petrino and Rich Rodriguez may give voters reason to believe that the level of talent in the conference has declined.  However, it also shows that the Big East has had as much talent as any conference in the country the past few years. The fact that there isn't a single team from the Big East ranked in the top 25 is remarkable and can at least be partially attributed to not fielding one especially dominant team.

Forty four out of sixty AP voters had at least one Big East team ranked in their top 25, while seven voters had as many as three. The lack of a ranked team shows that these votes were split just enough to keep a Big East school from earning a spot in the top 25. Twenty-three voters had Pittsburgh in their top 25; Rutgers was on fifteen ballots; fourteen had West Virginia, Cincinnati eleven, and South Florida three. Of course, the bigger problem is that voters view the ranked Big East teams as simply mediocre. In the AP, the highest ranked Big East team (overall) is Pittsburgh at number 28, followed by Rutgers at 30, West Virginia at 32, Cincinnati at 33, and South Florida at 45.  Although some individual AP voters definitely think highly of Big East schools:

·         Cincinnati –- Craig James (#12)

·         Rutgers  -- Jay G. Tate (#14)

·         Pittsburgh -- Jay G. Tate (#15)

·         West Virginia  -- Mitch Vingle (#15)

Despite the opinions of voters, the conference still has its fair share of talent.  When given the opportunity in the past several years, Big East teams have proven that they can play with anyone. The conference is 3-1 in its past four BCS games. In 2006, West Virginia, Louisville, and Rutgers were all ranked in the top 10 deep into the month of November. In 2007, when Florida won the national title, the Big East was a perfect 5-0 in bowl games while the SEC finished 6-3. That year also saw South Florida win a road game at Auburn. South Florida, who has reached the top 10 in each of the past two seasons, climbed all the way to number two in the nation midway through 2007. West Virginia, who is 4-0 in its last four bowl games, would have been playing for the national title that season had it not been for a late-November loss to conference rival Pittsburgh.

The lack of a team in this year's top 25 puts the Big East at a significant disadvantage when it comes to their chances at playing for the national title. The Coaches’ poll still accounts for one third of the BCS rankings, and the lack of a team in its top 25 could mean that even an undefeated season would not guarantee a Big East school a spot in the championship game.  Meanwhile other conference champions could possibly sneak into the BCS title game with one or even two losses.

Several Big East teams are ready to prove themselves to the voters this season.  The eight-team league will play six out-of-conference games against teams currently ranked in the AP top 25.  The marquee games for making a national statement are:

·         Connecticut vs. North Carolina (No. 21) Sept 12^th

·         Syracuse @ Penn State (No. 9) Sept 12^th

·         Louisville @ Utah (No. 19) Sept 26^th

·         South Florida @ FSU (No. 18) Sept 26^th

·         Pittsburgh vs. Notre Dame (No. 23) November 14^th

·         Connecticut @ Notre Dame (No. 23) November 21^st

While the Big East schools will generally be underdogs according to the voters, these games will be important benchmarks for the league as a whole.  If the Big East teams can win its share of those games and produce one or two teams that stand out from the rest of the league, they can silence the critics who think leagues like the Mountain West might be better suited for an automatic BCS bid over the Big East.

Leading Good and Bad Voters (posted 8/31/09)

PEOPLE'S PICK:  Good Voter of the Preseason:

PEOPLE'S PICK: Bad Voter of the Preseason:

Voting will continue until the new polls are released on Tuesday, 9/8/09.

Ballot Chat With Adam Van Brimmer (posted 8/27/09)

Compared to 2008’s preseason polls, 2009 is short on controversy.  Last year’s lightning rod for criticism was Taylor Zarzour.  However, no voter has been subject to that level of ire this year.  Craig James is currently leading with the most “bad” votes from fans….undoubtedly only because he left Boise State off his ballot.

However, the ballot that has caused the biggest stir this year comes from Adam Van Brimmer, writer for the Savannah Morning News.  Pollstalker ranked his ballot as the most extreme.  However, as we pointed out in our article (Inside the 2009 Preseason AP Poll), it is because he turned in last year’s final ballot (almost) for the preseason poll.  This is something he did last year as well, but it flew under many people’s radar due to all the attention on Zarzour.  Not this year.  Van Brimmer and Pollspeak have seen plenty of comments regarding his ballot.

Van Brimmer contacted Pollspeak with his explanation that originally ran in the August 23rd Savannah Morning News, reprinted here with permission:

“The only thing worse than guessing is uneducated guessing.

That's why I hate the Associated Press' preseason college football poll.

Yet I dutifully summit my ballot each August.

The AP's guidelines demand pollsters to vote based on what's happened on the field. Watch games, study statistics and make an educated guess on the identities of the 25 best teams in the country.

You can't do that in the preseason. Even if you attended a preseason scrimmage at every Division I-A school, you wouldn't learn much. I saw Georgia Tech scrimmage a week ago, and the offense looked awesome. Or was it just that the defense looked awful?

I won't really know until Sept. 5 (actually, since the Jackets open with Jacksonville State, I won't really know until the Sept. 10 game against Clemson).

So in keeping with my personal tradition, I submitted my final 2008 ballot as my preseason 2009 ballot. Actually, it was a corrected ballot - I inexplicably left LSU off my final 2008 ballot. The Tigers finished 8-5 but whipped Georgia Tech in the Chick-fil-A Bowl and should have been in my poll. I subbed them in at No. 24 on the preseason ballot, bumping Tulsa from No. 24 to No. 25 and dropping Ball State out (sorry Letterman fans).

That said, readers have been banging on me for years for submitting the previous year's final ballot as the next season's preseason poll. They say it is a cop out. And if not for the AP's aforementioned guidelines, I'd agree with them.”

So we asked Van Brimmer:  Why do you say you "inexplicably” left LSU off your final 2008 ballot?   That's not inexplicable at all....40 (out of 65) other voters did the same thing.  I'm sure nobody thought twice about leaving LSU off last year.  So why bother changing it this year?  If you used your same ballot from last year (a perfectly reasonable ballot), nobody could argue your team choices. They might not like the overall concept, but they can't argue specific team rankings.  But since you actually changed your ballot, you open yourself up to more criticism about team-specific rankings.

Van Brimmer’s reply was:  “I changed the ballot because leaving LSU off was a mistake on my part. I got a call from NY about leaving them off (of my preseason ballot), and I went back to look at my notes from the last poll last year. I had made a notation to put LSU on there near the bottom. Yes, they lost five games, including three of their final four in the regular season. But I didn't see any shame in losing to then No. 1 Alabama in OT and to their rival by a point. Then they proceeded to whip a pretty good Georgia Tech team. I just felt LSU had done enough to earn a spot at the bottom of the poll; then I overlooked it when I actually put the poll together. And when I make a mistake, I own up to it. It would have been easy to leave the ballot the way it was and use the reasoning I laid out above for leaving them off, but that would just be me covering my own ass, which I've never done as a pollster.”

“As you well know, my ballot is among those that is often under fire. I follow the AP guidelines as closely as anybody: I reevaluate every team every week and I bounce teams around liberally. Heck, I remember getting torched last September when I moved Alabama into the top five in the opening weeks. Following the guidelines, they deserved to be there for pummeling Clemson on a neutral site and then following that up by winning games against their cupcakes. By midseason, I wasn't getting that abuse anymore.”

Van Brimmer isn’t lying about reevaluation.  To be more specific, he moved Alabama from unranked in the preseason to #2 after the first week.  At the time, this was the highest ranking for the Tide in the country.

So with all of the criticism leveled towards him, how does Van Brimmer feel about Pollspeak and his peers in the AP Poll?  He says, “I appreciate what you do. I personally believe the AP poll is the only legitimate poll out there because it is the only one with transparency. I do get discouraged with many of my fellow AP voters who don't follow the guidelines very closely, but it's up to the AP to police that. I can only control my ballot. And the fact that the AP continues to ask me to vote every year tells me they appreciate my approach.”

“I do wish that the AP would either abolish the preseason poll or draw up some special guidelines for it. I could easily produce a top-25 of the teams I think are the most talented in the country. I could also take a look at every team's schedule and make a guess as to how they will finish in December (I actually did a top-10 for our readers using that approach). A preseason poll where the main guideline is to base things on what you see on the field is counterintuitive.”

“Quite frankly, I'm all in favor of turning over the entire AP poll panel. It's kind of like Congress -- too many people doing it the same way for too many years. Many pollsters have lost touch or are reluctant to adapt to the new guidelines. The only solution is to fire all of us and hire a new bunch that are required to follow the guidelines.”

Van Brimmer is right about one thing.  There is definitely a conflict between the AP’s voter guidelines and the preseason poll.  After all, the first guideline states: “Base your vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation.”  What else can voters go on in the preseason other than preseason speculation?  The wording itself makes the preseason poll seem pointless, and this guideline was obviously meant for weeks where actual games have been played.  There should be a new guideline specifically for the preseason poll.  For example, “Rank teams how you think they end the season” or “Rank teams how you think they will be ranked after the first game of the season.”  Pollspeak has contacted the Associated Press and reaffirmed the need for clarification.

Van Brimmer says he is used to fan criticism and that it comes with the territory.   He says, “Once the season starts, I spend several hours a week responding to e-mails from readers and fans and answering questions on radio and TV about it. I feel that is a responsibility, particularly for voters in states where there is only one AP pollster, like Georgia.  The only thing I ask is to be given the chance to explain why I do something the way I do it.”

However, before you launch a barrage of e-mails Adam Van Brimmer’s way, keep in mind that he is doing what he can to follow the AP guidelines, which need updating.  Also keep in mind that, in the end, even the oft-criticized Taylor Zarzour was proven correct in most of his extreme predictions from one year ago.

SI.com To Force Coaches To Make Ballots Public (posted 8/25/08)

Sport Illustrated's online division, SI.com, reports that it will be using the Freedom of Information Act to force the hands of coaches who work for public universities to make their ballots public.

The situation with secret ballots was already bad, and it is about to get worse.  The Coaches' Poll and Harris Interactive Poll (which make up 2/3 of the BCS formula) only released their ballots for the final week before the bowl games.  This means nobody can tell how they are voting for the rest of the year...or even for the final week after the bowls.

Now the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) has voted to no longer release their ballots for the final week of the regular season starting in 2010.  Releasing those ballots was a requirement of being part of the BCS, and we are still waiting for a response from the BCS about what this vote means to the coaches participating in the BCS formula.

If SI.com is successful in its records requests, it will obtain the ballots of at least 51 of the 59 voting coaches.  Of course, if they are successful, it might also force the AFCA to release all ballots since a majority of the coaches will already be doing so, and that would be an unfair advantage for the remaining few.

This would be great news for college football fans.  As you know, Pollspeak has been lobbying the AFCA, USA Today, Harris Interactive and BCS to make all ballots public.  We currently have over 500 names on our PETITION.  Pollspeak will help SI.com any way it can, and maybe someday soon we will start seeing coaches' ballots in Pollstalker every week along with the AP voters.  Some Harris Interactive voters may also be subject to public records laws, and we will be sure to investigate that possibility when the voters are announced.

You can read the full SI.com story here:  Fans have right to know how coaches vote in Coaches Poll.

Inside the 2009 Preseason AP Poll  (posted 8/24/09)

The 2009 Preseason AP Poll was released on August 22^nd along with all of the individual ballots.  Once again Pollspeak salutes you, Associated Press, for having the stones to stay transparent.  Before I get to the ballots, it’s interesting to note that every general point I made about the Preseason Coaches’ Poll (Inside the 2009 Preseason Coaches’ Poll ) holds true for the AP as well (although some minor details are a different):

• There are no Big East Teams in the top 25.  This is the first time that has happened in the BCS era.  Pittsburgh received the most votes (103), which puts it in the 28^th spot.
• LSU had the largest jump of any team.  The Tigers were unranked at the end of last season and jumped to No. 11 in the preseason, not quite as high as the Coaches’ No. 9, but it still shows a lot of faith that LSU will field a much better team in 2009.
• California had the next largest jump going from unranked last season to No. 12 in the preseason.  Cal has been a hard team for voters to predict over the last couple of years.  Golden Bear fans hope the voters have it right this time.
• Notre Dame is ranked again.  They are the only six-loss team in the preseason top-25.
• Utah suffered the largest drop of any team.  The Utes went from No. 2 last season to No. 19 in the preseason.  That’s not surprising to anybody who read last season’s article:  Non-BCS Teams Suffer From Preseason Bias.   
• This year’s non-BCS favorite is Boise State, ranked at No. 14.
• Texas Tech had the second-largest drop, from No. 12 last season to out of the top 25.  It seems the writers also know how hard it will be to replace Graham Harrell’s 5,111 yards passing and 45 touchdowns.
• No vote for Duke this year.  OK, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense in the AP Poll since Spurrier was the only one voting for Duke, and he doesn’t vote in the AP…but the point is still valid…no votes for Duke!

It’s also worth mentioning that the AP voter’s ballots were due on August 3^rd…before the Coaches’ Poll was released on August 7^th.  So this isn’t a case of the writers parroting the coaches.  It’s safe to say that the points above are a consensus of voter opinion nationwide.   We all know that coaches and reporters don’t always agree (except about being a man…and 40).  So this is refreshing.

Time to talk ballots…

The obvious place to start is with the ballot Pollstalker calls the most “extreme”:  Adam Van Brimmer’s ballot.  The Savannah Morning News writer has 8 extreme votes and 4 near-extremes.  If you look at his ballot, you might think, oh…this is a mistake.  He just turned in last year’s ballot.  It isn’t a mistake.  First of all, using last year’s ballot may not be such a bad idea.  The Billingsley Report, which is one of the BCS computer rankings, keeps its preseason poll exactly the same as its previous year’s final poll.  Although this is drastic, it isn’t totally unrealistic since nothing has changed on the field since last year.  All we have now is conjecture about graduations, injuries, coaching changes, etc.  Of course, if everybody felt this way, it would make for a pretty boring preseason poll, and it wouldn’t sell a lot of papers.  So don’t expect this to become the norm any time soon.

As for Adam Van Brimmer, his poll actually isn’t 100% the same as last year.  See his ballot from last year and note that his last two teams are actually different.  Last year he had Tulsa (No. 24) and Ball State (No. 25).  This year he has LSU (No. 24) and Tulsa (No. 25).  So this is definitely a different ballot and intentional.  However, it seems odd to use the controversial philosophy of keeping last year’s ballot, but then change the last two teams.  Maybe he didn’t want to upset LSU fans by being the only one to leave them unranked, but this seems even worse.  If he didn’t put LSU on his ballot he could just stick to his guns and say, “I just submitted last year’s ballot.”   LSU wasn’t ranked last year…end of argument.  Instead he actually went through the trouble of adding the Tigers to his ballot…but he��s ranked them lowest in the country.

Our next extreme ballot is Mitch Vingle who has 7 extreme votes, 5 of which appear in his top 6 teams.  He ranks USC (No. 2), Ohio State (No. 3) and Georgia (No. 5) highest.  He ranks Texas (No. 4) and Oklahoma (No. 6) lowest.  Additionally he has FSU (No. 12) and West Virginia (No. 15) highest.  Note that Vingle writes for the Charleston, West Virginia paper…so the latter ranking might somehow be related…maybe.

Fan favorite, Jon Wilner, is responsible for 5 extreme votes and 5 near-extremes.  Notably he ranked Ohio State (No. 3) highest and USC (No. 7) and Alabama (No. 18) lowest. He also gave Vanderbilt  their only vote, and Central Michigan the highest of their two votes.

Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s ballot is interesting mostly because of his first and last votes.  He was only one of two voters to rank Texas No. 1 (Joe Giglio was the other) over Florida.  Then there is his last vote…Rutgers.  OK, Rutgers isn’t that interesting.  What is interesting is that when you get to Rutgers, you realize, “Where is Georgia?”  Gorman was the only voter to leave the Bulldogs off his ballot.  In their place, he was the only voter to rank Northwestern and one of the few to rank Tennessee.

Columbus, Ohio’s Doug Lesmerises also checks in with 5 extreme votes and 3 near extremes.  He ranks Mississippi (No. 4), California (No. 6) and North Carolina (No. 11) highest, and Virginia Tech (No. 18) lowest.  He was also the only voter to throw Nevada (No. 25) a vote.

On that note, the teams who only received one vote are below.  Click the links to see who voted for them:

Let me finish up by taking a look at the voters themselves and where they come from.  First of all, there are only 60 voters this year instead of 65.  This is one cut that you can’t blame on the economy.  Blame Pollspeak instead.  Last season we pointed out an error in the AP’s formula for selecting voters (Ranking the Polls). 

We specifically mentioned that California, Illinois and other states had too many voters. (According to the AP’s own formula, which is based on the number of FBS schools in a state.)  Well, the AP fixed it this year.  See this chart of which states lost voters.

California, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania all lost a vote…and rightfully so.  So now the only state with four votes is Texas, which has 10 FBS schools.  California and Florida each have seven FBS teams and now both have three votes.  The next state to potentially get four votes would be Ohio, which has 8 FBS schools and 3 votes…if you count Kirk Herbstreit as an Ohio voter, which the AP still does for some reason.  Even though they now list Herbstreit as an “ESPN/ABC” employee and no longer as an employee of an AM radio station in Ohio.

Finally, here is a list of all of the AP voter changes from last year.  There are 30 new voters this year, but that isn’t unusual for the AP.  Last year the AP had 28 new voters.  Obviously (just like coaches) some writers move on to ��future endeavors”.  However, more often, there are a lot of papers and writers who would like a vote so they tend to spread the wealth.  Also, some voters are on a rotation where they do football polls one year and basketball the next.

Even with the Florida Gators garnering a preseason record 96.67% of first-place votes, the 2009 season is still shaping up to be a contentious year.  54 teams received at least one vote, but only 11 teams were ranked by every voter.  That's 43 "ranked" teams where at least one voter doesn't think they should be in the top 25.  Also, with teams like Georgia and California, which have the largest ranges of votes (ranging from No. 5 & No. 6 to unranked), this season should hold a lot of drama for those who watch the polls.  We’re all anxious for the season to begin, and rest assured, Pollspeak will continue watching the watchmen….and not the movie either.  We’ve already met our quota of naked blue guys for the year.

"Week 1" Preseason AP Poll Released  (posted 8/22/09)

Although three ballots are currently missing from the AP:  Barker Davis, John Davis and Rich Kaiust.  See Pollstalker to view and vote on the ballots with the AP Poll CFB '09 Report or compare all of the polls using POLLSTALKER'S BCS+AP COMPILED '09 REPORT.

Update (1:30pm EST):  All missing ballots have been added to Pollstalker.

Sagarin and Billingsley Preseason Ratings Released  (posted 8/20/09)

Both Jeff Sagarin's NCAA Football Ratings and the Billingsley Report preseason rankings are now available in Pollstalker.  Both are components of the BCS formula.  Note that the Billingsley Report preseason rankings have actually been available for quite a while since they are really just the final rankings from the 2008 season.  View them all using POLLSTALKER'S BCS+AP COMPILED '09 REPORT.

Inside the 2009 Preseason Coaches' Poll  (posted 8/9/09)

The 2009 USA Today Preseason Coaches’ Poll was released on Friday, August 7^th.  Here are some quick points of interest we can easily glean from the voting:

• There are no Big East Teams in the top 25.  This is the first time that has happened in the BCS era, and it wasn’t even close.  Cincinnati received the most votes (90), which is slightly more than half of what they needed to crack the top 25.
• LSU had the largest jump of any team.  The Tigers were unranked at the end of last season and jumped to #9 in the preseason.  The voters either think last year was a fluke or the Tigers have one heck of an off-season training program.
• California had the next largest jump going from #25 last season to #12 in the preseason.  In 2008 Cal was unranked in the preseason, but ended up ranked at the end (#25).  Ironically, Cal was also ranked #12 in the 2007 preseason poll, but weren’t ranked at season’s end.  It seems voters have a hard time predicting how Cal will do in the preseason.  Golden Bear fans hope that trend stops this year.
• Notre Dame is ranked again.  They are the only six-loss team in the preseason top-25.
• Utah suffered the largest drop of any team.  The Utes went from #4 last season to #18 in the preseason.  That’s not surprising to anybody who read last season’s article:  Non-BCS Teams Suffer From Preseason Bias.    
• This year’s non-BCS favorite is Boise State, ranked at #16.
• Texas Tech had the second-largest drop, from #12 last season to out of the top 25.  It seems the coaches know how hard it will be to replace Graham Harrell’s 5,111 yards passing and 45 touchdowns.
• No vote for Duke this year.  That’s two years in a row that Steve Spurrier didn’t cast a token vote for his old school.  That tradition may be a thing of the past.  

Digging deeper and looking at the voters themselves we can see some interesting trends:

There were lots of voter changes in 2009 -- 28 new coaches voting this year.  That’s double the number of changes made in the previous year.  You can view the complete list of changes here. 

There are also two less voters in 2009 – 59 instead of 61.  There are some notable coaches no longer voting, including:

• Utah’s Kyle Wittingham – maybe he decided he wouldn’t bother after last year’s snubbing.  After an undefeated season, the coaches ranked Utah lowest of all the final polls and computers at #4.
• Florida’s Urban Meyer – maybe it’s a show of solidarity for his ex-Utah brethren.  Or maybe he figured the Gators were already a lock for #1 so why bother?  Voting is just redundant.
• Texas’ Mack Brown lost his vote, and Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops picked it up.  Do these guys compete over everything?

2009 has a much better distribution of votes between the conferences.  After we pointed out the inequities in how votes were distributed last year, it looks like the American Football Coaches Association tried to stay closer to the 50% rule.  In other words, 50% of a league’s coaches get to vote.  Unlike last year, all 12-team leagues now have 6 coaches voting (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, C-USA and SEC).  Last year some conferences had 7 coaches voting (Big 12, Big Ten, and SEC).  So where did those three extra votes go?  There are two less coaches voting this year, so two of them went nowhere.  The third went to Navy, which is independent.

One problem last year was that the Big Ten had seven coaches voting even though the league only has eleven teams.  That was a measurable advantage (64%).  At least now the Big Ten doesn’t have more coaches voting than leagues with more teams, but they do have the same number, which is still a minor advantage statistically.  However, it also wouldn’t be fair to give the Big Ten only 5 coach votes because that would put them on par with the Pac-10, which only has 10 teams.  With an odd number of teams (11) we have to either round up or down, and the coaches chose to round up. 

They didn’t round up for the Mountain West or WAC; however, which have 9 teams, but only 4 coaches voting.  Also the MAC is an odd duck with 13 teams, but only 6 votes.  Every other league follows the 50% rule. 

Even independents follow the 50% rule.  There are four independent teams and two of them (Notre Dame and Navy) have a vote.   So they should either give the Mountain West and WAC five votes or the Big Ten five votes.  Either one would fix the discrepancy.  However, this year was an improvement over last year in terms of parity, and the Big Ten certainly didn’t use its advantage with only three teams ranked in the preseason top 25.

Number of Coaches with Votes:

Number of Teams in the Top 25:

Preseason Poll Retrospective: Taylor Zarzour (posted 8/5/09)

Here is Pollspeak’s official stance on preseason polls -- We don��t like them.   To clarify, we like them as fans, and we like them as a site dedicated to polls.  It gives us something to talk about…and that is really why preseason polls were invented.  We just don’t like them as a tool for helping to decide the eventual national champion.  The preseason polls help set expectations for the rest of the season, which makes it harder for unranked teams to climb to the top.

The BCS actually helps minimize the effect of preseason polls by not releasing the official results until October and by including computers, most of which don’t have preseason bias.  However, it would be great if both the AP and Coaches’ polls formally asked their voters to throw away their ballots at some point during the season.  Of course, we could never police it, but at least it would make the point clear:  “base your votes on what happened up to this week…don’t try to uphold your preseason guesses.”

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about …preseason polls. With the 2009 preseason polls looming, this is a good time to look back at 2008’s preseason polls and see what we learned.

Again, since the AP is the only poll to release its preseason ballots publically, we will focus on the AP.  As a point of reference, the AP preseason #1 team has ended up the final #1 team ten times in the 58 year history of the preseason AP poll (which started 1950).  And only two times in history (FSU in 1999 and USC in 2004) has a team stayed at #1 throughout the entire season.  That’s certainly better than monkeys throwing darts, but it would be a stretch to call AP preseason voters wholly “accurate.”

I could use this article to evaluate each of the 65 AP voter’s ballots and create a formula that determines which is the most accurate based on standard deviation, etc.  However, my goal isn’t to find out who is the most accurate (especially in a poll where we don’t want voters to try to maintain their preseason predictions throughout the year).  We don’t want to reward people for being prophetic.  We want to reward people for being unbiased and observant. Plus that much research would really be a pain in the ass.  So if somebody else wants to go through that exercise, we’ll gladly publish the results (with yet another half-page disclaimer).

Instead I want to write about the one preseason ballot that caused more controversy than all others last year – Taylor Zarour’s ballot.

Last year Zarzour received national recognition for what many fans were calling a biased, uneducated or simply “horrible” preseason ballot.  He received a lot of hate mail and had to do some interviews and articles to set the record straight.  He sent Pollspeak a brief statement that you can read here.    

Zarzour brought some of the criticism upon himself because his bio had some biased statements in it (to paraphrase:  espousing his love for his alma mater, Alabama, and dislike of Auburn and Tennessee).  But did his ballot actually deserve the criticism?  How did Zarzour really do?  Was he prophetic?

You can see his pre-season ballot here:  Taylor Zarzour’s Preseason Ballot (week 1, 2008).  The votes that are highlighted in red (and to a lesser extent, yellow) are the ones that caused a stir.  Let’s look at each:

He angered the most people with the teams he totally left off his ballot:  Auburn, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee and West Virginia.    In particular, he was the only voter to leave both Auburn and West Virginia off his ballot.  Meanwhile other voters had Auburn ranked as high as #5 and West Virginia as high as #3.  Both teams had high expectations for 2008.

Flash forward to the final week (17) and take a look at how these two teams finished.  We could use Zarzour’s Week 17 ballot for comparison, but instead we’ll use the BCS + AP Compiled Report, which shows how the AP and all of the BCS rankings rated the teams.  You can see that report by clicking here.

Auburn was indeed not ranked by any human or computer.  West Virginia was ranked #23 at best and unranked by five of the eight polls.  (For the sake of this article “unranked” means any number higher than 25 since Zarzour’s AP ballot can only hold 25 teams.)  In these two cases (the two that caused Zarzour the most flak) he was the only voter to even come close to predicting the downfall of these teams.

As for the other teams he didn’t rank in the preseason, Zarzour had a little company:  Illinois (five left them unranked), Kansas (three left them unranked), and Tennessee (six left them unranked.)  Still he was very much in the minority.

In week 17, Illinois didn’t receive a single human or computer vote, Kansas was “unranked” in every poll, and Tennessee again didn’t get a single human or computer vote.  All of these minority voters, including Zarzour, were dead on.

Zarzour also caught some grief for voting Notre Dame highest at #25 (along with John Wilner).  In other words, nobody else had them on their ballot.  By year’s end, it was obvious that Notre Dame had a terrible season and didn’t garner a single human or computer vote.   Okay, so you could argue Zarzour was WAY off on that one, but in reality, he gave the Fighting Irish the lowest rating he possibly could (#25).  So really he was just one off from the rest of the voters. 

Next he had Florida State at #20, and only one other person ranked the Seminoles higher (Joe Giglio).  By comparison, only 13 of the 65 AP preseason voters even ranked the Seminoles at all.  In the final week, Florida State was ranked by seven of the eight polls, ranked between #16 and #23.  Zarzour’s preseason #20 falls squarely in the middle of that range.

Zarzour had Pittsburgh ranked highly at #19 in his preseason ballot.  In the end, the Panthers were only ranked by three of the eight polls, but two of the computers were at #17.  So this is also justifiable in the end.

Then Zarzour had Missouri lowest at #15.   By season’s end, #15 was Missouri’s highest ranking (Anderson/Hester) with the other polls ranging from #16 to #22.  Zarzour was the most accurate preseason voter for Mizzou.

Next he had Ohio State lowest at #13.  A vast majority of the voters had the Buckeyes as a top three team.  The final polls ranked Ohio State between #9 and #17.  Once again he was inside the final range.

Zarzour had Boise State highest at #11.  He was one of only two voters to even rank the Broncos.  In Week 17, every poll ranked the Broncos:  from #9 to #15.  He was right again.

He gave Wisconsin one of their highest rankings at #9.  He was off on this one.  Nobody had Wisconsin ranked in the end.  Then again, only two voters had the Badgers unranked in the preseason.

Next Zarzour had Penn State ranked highest at #8 while a majority of voters had them anywhere from #20 to unranked.  After a stellar season, the Nittany Lions were ranked from #8 to #13 by the eight major polls.  Three of the polls had them at #8.  Again, he nailed it.

Next he had Virginia Tech highest at #7.  Zarzour didn’t stick this one, but the Hokies ended the season ranked between #14 and #20.  Not too far off.

Finally, Zarzour ranked California highest in the country at #6.  This can probably be considered his biggest mistake.  Most of the country didn’t rank the Golden Bears in the preseason and Zarzour’s #6 was the highest ranking by far.  In the end, California finished unranked in the AP poll and between #18 and #25 in the others.

In summary, Zarzour had 15 preseason votes that seemed out of whack with the rest of the country.  Keep in mind that this is out of a ballot of 25.  However, in the end, only three of those votes turned out to be off (Notre Dame, Wisconsin and California).  Virginia Tech was borderline.  The other eleven were pretty much dead on.

Nobody’s ballot is perfect.  For example, nobody predicted Utah or Alabama would have the dream seasons they ended up having.  Zarzour was not one of the six people to guess Florida would be the BCS champion.  (He had them ranked #2.)  Was Zarzour’s preseason ballot the closest to perfect?  Although we can certainly say he did better than many voters, that’s not the point of this article.  The point is that the votes that upset fans the most turned out to be right.  So maybe irate fans should take a cue from the BCS.  They can write their hate mail after the preseason polls are released in August, but they shouldn’t mail them until October.  

AP and Coaches' Preseason Poll Release Dates Announced  (posted 8/4/09)

The USA Today/Coaches' Preseason Poll will be released Friday, August 7th.  The ballots will be kept secret as they have been in the past.  We will continue to press the Coaches' Association and the BCS to make all ballots public.  You can do your part by signing the PETITION.

The AP Preseason poll will be released Saturday August 22nd.  As usual, the ballots will be made public.  Associated Press, we salute you.