As you can see if you look above Mssrs. Brown and Dooley, I’ve created a page at the blog for the Mumme Poll.
I think it will be a good idea to try a practice run after the fourth or fifth week of the season, both as a reminder of what’s to come (there you go, Ally!) and also to make sure that everyone is on the same page about how to fill out the ballot.
Again, I’m very gratified by your response to this. I’m looking forward to seeing where it takes us.
Get The Picture 
Would it be better to do one the first or second week then have a layoff?
Just asking because the premise seems to be that the official one starts too early. I would think the practice runs in the fourth or fifth week would come closer to effecting the way we vote in the sixth week rather than the first or second week doing so.
Then again, could be that if we do it the first or second week, everyone forgets the mistakes they made by the sixth week and we get a screwed up poll anyways.
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Well, maybe one way around that would be to emphasize the format over the content.
For the trial run, I just want to make sure everyone knows the procedure, anyway, so I’ll be checking to see that the e-mail account works and ballots show up with twelve teams on them (with five of those designated as the top five).
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lol. Bless you!
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I really like the format of this poll, and agree no poll is valid until a few games have actually been played. I do wonder about the geographical dispersion of the poll undermining it’s credibility so is there any attempt to enlist participants from other conference boards? Should there be a balance on the number of voters from each conference? I THINK I will be very balanced in my voting but I watch football all day and night on Saturdays, and replays during the week, and spend 30++ hours researching CFB every week. Many fans are just fans of one specific team and only read headlines of national games/teams. Just wondering if you are making any effort to recruit additional voters from other areas.
I also suggest some minimal, but specific, guidance be provided as to what criteria should be used by voters when completing their ballot. There has been a lot of conversation this pre-season about whether the polls reflect who is the best team, or who is likely to be standing at the end of a season (due to perceived schedule and depth issues.) If no instructions are to be given, I would put the best 12 teams as of that point in time based on performance without consideration of what might happen later. My assumption is this is what you intend, but having all voters on the same page would be advantageous. (I also feel Heisman voters have different viewpoints on what they are voting on, as do voters for MVP awards.) If you are trying to prove your method is a better way, perhaps you should clear up another thing the current polls do wrong by making sure we all start from the same point.
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Sam, on your first point, I’ve thought about it, but haven’t made a decision for a couple of reasons. (See my comments about that on the Mumme Poll page above.)
As to the second point, that’s one of my biggest problems with preseason polls. By their nature, they invite assessment based on the expectation of what’s to come. The purpose of holding off until week 6 to commence voting is to give voters a base of actual in-season performance from which to evaluate the schools. I don’t want to hammer people too hard on this, but I will probably drop a gentle reminder at some point prior to the first vote.
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Is it still too late to get in?
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I agree with Sam. It’s not that Phil Steele ranked Georgia no. 9…well, okay, so it is that he ranked Georgia no. 9. But ranking a team no. 9 because the schedule is so tough? As has been pointed out several times here and elsewhere, we’ll only know how tough Georgia’s schedule truly was after the season is over.
Rank ’em based on what they’ve accomplished, man, or absent that, rank ’em based on who you think they could beat.
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Is it still too late to get in?
Not for a while…
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Will, not to belabor the point, but what you and Sam object to is the reason I don’t like preseason polls. The voters have no track record to base their evaluations on. It’s all about projections, which naturally invite a look at the schedule.
The hope in delaying the first vote until we’re six weeks into the season is that the body of work will be large enough to allow you to cast a ballot that’s based on actual performance.
Just a reminder of a few of the games that will have been played by then: Alabama-Clemson; Illinois-Missouri; Kansas-South Florida; Tennessee-UCLA; LSU-Auburn; Florida-Tennessee; Ohio State-USC; Georgia-Arizona State; Tennessee-Auburn; Alabama-Georgia; Missouri-Nebraska. We ought to be getting a pretty good feel for the merits of most programs by then without having to do much projecting.
At least that’s the plan. 😉
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I like the idea of maybe getting some other bloggers for other BCS conference teams involved, too, to have a better population of data.
Also, do you think it would be a good idea to get a list of people’s addresses and conference affiliations and all before hand so you don’t just have randoms coming in and putting their team #1 every week?
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Also, do you think it would be a good idea to get a list of people’s addresses and conference affiliations and all before hand so you don’t just have randoms coming in and putting their team #1 every week?
I do, but I’ll probably handle that in a slightly easier (for me, at least) way when the time comes.
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Just for the record, I don’t object to waiting until October, in fact I agree 100% with that. I was trying to say the thought process of my rankings of team woul be different if I were trying to predict the final poll versus what has been accomplished. And I only want ot approach it consistently with other voters.
For instance, let’s say OSU loses to USC by 10 in September and they only face mediocre Big 11 games the remainder of the season. I would expect they might finish 11-1, and rank them highly if I were predicted the final poll. If I were to rank them as a team that has not beaten a strong team yet, and lost the only tough contest they have played, they may be near the bottom of my Top 12 list, or not on it at all. That is a significant difference in the input data for me, and might be different for a majority of your voters.
My only suggestion is to state up front if we are using the performance to date of teams, or factoring in they may have the toughest part of their schedule behind them. Also, if a key player (say Tebow) is injured and will miss 6-8 weeks, Florida may be unbeaten through September but face LSU, UGA, SC, and FSU without their superstar. If I am rating the UF that is unbeaten in September with convincing wins over TN and Miami, I rate them Top 5, but if predicting their finish, they would not get that designation.
I think you are looking to rate the teams based on performance on the field as of that date, and I don’t object to that at all….in fact I prefer that. I am only saying if the guidelines aren’t issued, some will vote stick, and some will vote spray. My comments above were to make sure your idea spreads because I feel it is a much better methodology, and I feel voters in the current polls are not always singing from the same page of the hymnal (see Phil Steel vs other polls with UGA as #1.)
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… I was trying to say the thought process of my rankings of team woul be different if I were trying to predict the final poll versus what has been accomplished. And I only want ot approach it consistently with other voters.
To some extent, I think you’re getting into a gray area here.
There are two things I want to see if I can correct, or at least reduce the effect of, with this poll: voter bias and relying on a poll that’s pure projection as a baseline for subsequent ballots. Those are matters that I’m trying to address with the mechanics of the poll.
What you’re asking for is much more subjective and much harder to ascertain. Plus, there’s no way to adjust the process to take it into account. I do think that waiting to vote until after a third of the season has passed will address some of your concern.
Besides, with every week that goes by from there, voters will have less to project. By season’s end, even if you think that others used a different methodology than you did in the weeks before, everybody winds up in the same place, don’t they?
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Yes, my point does lose significance with each passing week, and you have reduced that by starting later. My question about Ohio State is the issue I was bringing up, and it is larger in early October than it will be in mid-November. As you state, we do end up at the same place at the end of the season. What I really like is not going beyond 12 teams, as the remainder of the Top 25 will flow from the number of votes the lesser teams get. And that is why having geographical representation will help. If you ask people in the Southeast to name the top 12 at this time of year, you might not get 25 different teams!
I have seven teams I think (at this point) that can make it all the way, and it would be hard to give just five of them the nod by giving them an asterisk. It will be much easier in October to narrow the list to five contenders. Again, congrats for taking the initiative.
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