Mumme Poll

INTRODUCTION

The Mumme Poll is an ongoing attempt, jointly sponsored by two college football blogs, Get The Picture and 3^rd Saturday in Blogtober, to construct a viable method to rank Division 1 college football teams without the bias and potential conflicts of interest that affect other polls, particularly the USA Today Coaches Poll.

This is accomplished by means of conducting the voting in two very different ways from other football polls:

1. The first vote does not take place until after the games of Week Six have been played.  Voters are not asked to evaluate teams based on preseason expectations and are not expected to use those as a baseline from which to rank teams for the rest of the year.
2. Rather than being required to rank twenty five D-1 teams in order of preference, Mumme Poll voters submit ballots of the top twelve teams in the country, without ranking (other than to designate a top five from those twelve, for use as a tiebreaker).  The poll rankings are then compiled by means of approval voting; that is, the teams are ranked in the order of the total number of times they appear on voters’ ballots.  (For more on approval voting as a means of addressing bias in the Coaches’ Poll, see this post.)

BACKGROUND/HISTORY

The inspiration for the Mumme Poll came from the final 2007 regular season Coaches Poll and Tony Barnhart’s post breaking down some of the more questionable ballots.  (You can read that post here.)  The poll is in fact named in honor of the most questionable vote of that Coaches Poll – Hal Mumme’s ballot listing Hawaii as the number one team in the country.

In response, the initial Mumme Poll ran at Get The Picture for the 2008 season.  Florida finished first at season’s end.

With the 2009 season, the poll has a new home at this site.  While the mechanics of the voting have not changed from the first year, the move has allowed for a web interface that makes the voting process much more user friendly.  Additionally, the new site will carry poll related commentary from several other college football bloggers.

PARTICIPATION

We’re (small “d”) democrats here.  Mumme Poll voting is open to any knowledgeable, enthusiastic college football fan.  That’s part of the fun of it.

RULES

There aren’t many, but what few there are matter.

1. Registration. To cast a ballot, you’ll need to register at the new site.  Registration each season is limited to the week leading up to and through the games of week five.
2. Voting period. In most weeks, balloting takes place at any time between 9:00 A.M. on the Sunday following the games and 9:00 P.M. on the following Monday.  On those rare weeks when a Sunday game is played, the voting is pushed back 24 hours.
3. Ballot format. A ballot must contain votes for twelve schools and a top five group selected from those schools.
4. The one commandment. Don’t try to game the system. Don’t subvert the vote by submitting a ballot with your favorite school and the eleven worst teams in D-1, for example.  The ballots are monitored and if something questionable comes up, a voter will be given a chance to explain.  But if we’re convinced there’s a deliberate effort to muck things up, we’ll toss the ballot and the voter.