College Football BlogPoll, Week 10: LSU, Alabama Will Meet As Top Two Teams

To no one's surprise, idle LSU and Alabama didn't see their standing diminished in the Week 10 BlogPoll. The SEC leviathans continue on their collision course as the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the BlogPoll, making their hegemony at the top two spots in the Week 10 college football rankings a near-universal agreement, from the BCS standings to the major human polls to some of the most knowledgeable writers in the blogosphere.

The top four all remain the same, too — Oklahoma State and Stanford held their ground with Week 9 wins — but Boise State moves up to fifth, with a procession of one-loss teams behind it. Clemson falls five spots to No. 10 after suffering its first loss of the 2011 college football season.

And way down at the bottom of the poll, Southern Misssissippi makes its 2011 BlogPoll debut, moving from last team outside the top 25 to No. 24.

Here's the full Week 10 BlogPoll, with all the analysis you've come to love.

Results for Week 10

#	School	Points/blog	SD	Delta
1	LSU Tigers (76)	25.11	2.61	--
2	Alabama Crimson Tide (15)	24.41	2.53	--
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	22.82	2.27	--
4	Stanford Cardinal	22.20	2.21	--
5	Boise St. Broncos	21.32	1.82	1
6	Oregon Ducks	19.91	1.90	1
7	Oklahoma Sooners	18.97	1.24	4
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	17.18	2.02	1
9	Nebraska Cornhuskers	16.68	1.67	4
10	Clemson Tigers	15.36	2.16	-5
11	South Carolina Gamecocks	13.92	2.81	4
12	Virginia Tech Hokies	13.06	2.72	2
13	Houston Cougars	11.84	4.10	5
14	Michigan Wolverines	11.43	3.21	3
15	Penn St. Nittany Lions	10.57	3.47	4
16	Michigan St. Spartans	10.07	2.37	-6
17	Kansas St. Wildcats	9.87	3.75	-9
18	Wisconsin Badgers	7.99	3.18	-6
19	Georgia Bulldogs	6.79	3.07	4
20	Arizona St. Sun Devils	6.56	2.82	2
21	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	4.58	3.04	9
22	USC Trojans	3.87	3.97	-1
23	Cincinnati Bearcats	3.76	3.50	1
24	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	2.26	2.81	2
25	West Virginia Mountaineers	2.24	2.73	--
Others Receiving Votes: Texas Longhorns | Auburn Tigers | Washington Huskies | Texas A&M Aggies | Ohio St. Buckeyes | TCU Horned Frogs | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | Florida St. Seminoles | Texas Tech Red Raiders | Missouri Tigers | Arkansas St. Red Wolves | Florida Gators | North Carolina Tar Heels | Virginia Cavaliers | Wyoming Cowboys
Updated: Nov 1, 2011 9:51 AM EDT

Total Ballots: 90

Explore votes by team | Explore poll ballots by voter

There are more first-place votes than ballots counted. We know. We're working on it.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

Not a ton of glaring wrongness this week, but Orange::44 ranks Florida 16th. You know, 4-4, scored 47 points in the month of October Florida? Yeah, the Gators are someone's No. 16 team, and that someone's the only BlogPoll voter to rank Florida this week. Congrats, you crazy diamond.

SpartyMSU still has one-loss Oregon ahead of undefeated Boise State, but triples its madness by elevating both a dominant Oklahoma squad and an Arkansas team that struggled with Vanderbilt past the Broncos, too. I ... don't get it.

Now on to the extracurriculars. First up are the teams which spur the most and least 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, Utah) would all be at the top.

Houston remains undefeated, but I've had to look up the Cougars' schedule every week to remind myself of who they've downed. That's a good way to foment disagreement, as is losing in triple overtime to one of the nation's best teams. And wondering whether the real Kansas State is the team that gritted out tough wins or the one that got firebombed by Oklahoma is probably fair, too.

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.

IT'S THE REVENGE OF RESUME BALLOTING. This week had four highly ranked teams lose (Clemson, Kansas State, Michigan State, Wisconsin), and those four being primed for big losses in resume voters' eyes probably helped Black Heart Gold Pants and Frogs O' War here.

I'm guessing The Daily Gopher will be on target this week and never again, as a tribute to its Minnesota squad.

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.

Do you find it odd that Frogs O' War's strict resume ballot (with a twist) rewards its own Horned Frogs? Don't: eight ballots had TCU ranked, and SB Nation's TCU bloggers weren't the highest on them. This isn't uncommon when a team that isn't near the consensus top 25 is also on a few voters' lists.

Only seven voters who ranked Wisconsin ranked the Badgers lower than the No. 22 spot The Ciskie Blog gave them.

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.

It's the "twist" of Frogs O' War's voting philosophy that propels the blog to a neat trifecta this week. Prohibiting a Team A that beat a Team B in the previous week from being ranked behind Team B in its ballot means that Georgia Tech outranks Clemson on Frogs O' War's Week 10 ballot, and, this week, that produces a massive amount of swing.

Three-way tie for being unimpressed! Whee!