College Football Rankings, Week 11: Alabama Falls In BlogPoll, But Only To No. 4

Much as in the major human polls and BCS rankings this week, I was most interested to see where Alabama would rank in the Week 11 BlogPoll. That answer is No. 4, behind No. 1 LSU, No. 2 Oklahoma State, and No. 3 Stanford. If the BlogPoll were a component of the BCS formula, that would be bad news for No. 5 Boise State.

Alabama's points-per-blog is consistent with a consensus No. 4 team; Oklahoma State's and Stanford's numbers look more like No. 2.3 and No. 2.7, while Boise's at something like No. 4.6. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry: it's basically the same as saying that Alabama is first in line behind the last three major undefeated teams, and that, as in other college football rankings for Week 11, its one loss to LSU hurts it less than Boise State would have wanted.

Elsewhere, Nebraska falls out of the top 10 after losing to Northwestern, Michigan nearly falls out of the top 25 after a road loss to Iowa, Georgia creeps into the top 15 to bolster Boise, and no one has any idea what to do with USC, as usual.

Results for Week 11

#	School	Points/blog	SD	Delta
1	LSU Tigers (80)	25.27	2.78	--
2	Oklahoma St. Cowboys (1)	23.69	2.49	1
3	Stanford Cardinal (1)	23.16	2.32	1
4	Alabama Crimson Tide	21.94	2.02	-2
5	Boise St. Broncos	21.59	1.83	--
6	Oregon Ducks	20.05	1.97	--
7	Oklahoma Sooners	19.37	1.70	--
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	18.38	1.49	--
9	Clemson Tigers	16.68	0.86	1
10	Virginia Tech Hokies	14.90	2.30	2
11	Houston Cougars	14.32	3.25	2
12	Penn St. Nittany Lions	12.53	3.93	3
13	Michigan St. Spartans	11.38	2.65	3
14	Georgia Bulldogs	10.70	2.87	5
15	Wisconsin Badgers	10.47	2.79	3
16	South Carolina Gamecocks	9.81	3.73	-5
17	Nebraska Cornhuskers	7.88	3.09	-8
18	Kansas St. Wildcats	7.67	4.41	-1
19	USC Trojans	6.32	4.58	3
20	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	6.09	3.27	1
21	Cincinnati Bearcats	5.89	4.09	2
22	Texas Longhorns	5.52	3.59	4
23	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	4.48	3.51	1
24	Michigan Wolverines	4.44	3.31	-10
25	Auburn Tigers	2.00	2.68	2
Others Receiving Votes: TCU Horned Frogs | Ohio St. Buckeyes | Florida St. Seminoles | Arizona St. Sun Devils | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | Texas A&M Aggies | Virginia Cavaliers | Arkansas St. Red Wolves | Baylor Bears | West Virginia Mountaineers | Washington Huskies | Missouri Tigers | Florida Gators | Louisiana Ragin Cajuns | Illinois Fighting Illini | Iowa Hawkeyes
Updated: Nov 8, 2011 9:47 AM EST

Total Ballots: 81

Explore votes by team | Explore poll ballots by voter

Wack Ballot Watchdog

The first-place votes for Oklahoma State and Stanford didn't come from where you might think: Husker Mike's Blasphemy enthroned the Cowboys, ranking LSU third, while the Cardinal got their top spot from NittanyWhiteOut.

Tomahawk Nation has Boise the lowest, at No. 10 and behind Virginia Tech. Most of you know I'm not the strictest resume ballot voter, but I do use best wins when ranking teams; that helps me avoid putting a team whose best win is by three points at home over Miami ahead of a team that dissected Georgia in Atlanta.

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, Kansas) would all be at the top.

No shock here: USC's a West Coast team that doesn't show up on TV until very late, and alternates between giving Minnesota an upset chance and hanging with Stanford in three overtimes. I guess the win over Colorado was enough for a lot of voters.

Kansas State, Cincinnati, and Penn State all fall into the Gaudy Records Compiled Against Clearly Inferior Teams categoy, while South Carolina is a decent team with a good defense that has been decimated by offensive injuries.

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 continues to give voters a great chance to top this category, and this week, it's corrections for South Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, and even Alabama that propel Black Heart Gold Pants and Frogs O' War.

Evidence of how screwy this college football season is: Frank the Tank's Slant's top five is LSU, Stanford, Boise State, Oklahoma State, and Alabama, in that order, and still wins this category easily.

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.

Frogs O' War has been high on TCU, winning this category last week, and now has the Horned Frogs 20th when they're a consensus 26th.

Wisconsin's up to No. 15 in the BlogPoll, and yet The Ciskie Blog has the Badgers No. 20 — yet again, Week 10's winner repeats in a category.

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.

And this makes three straight repeat wins from Week 10, in large part because Frogs O' War has three teams moving more than 10 spots at a time when few voters are moving even a single team that dramatically.

The thing I like about low-swing ballots is how tidy they look. Not moving Kansas State helped the Bucky's 5th Quarter folks in this regard.