After mulling things over, including a lot of very good suggestions in the comments to my last post on the Mumme Poll, here’s what I’m leaning towards doing:
- There will be a final Mumme Poll for which the voting will take place after the BCS title game has been played.
- Just as the Coaches Poll does, we will recognize the BCS title game winner as the undisputed MNC.
- That means that the final ballot will be comprised of eleven, not twelve teams. We’ll vote for a top four and then the remaining seven top schools.
- Anyone that’s been counted as a voter in any Mumme Poll this season is eligible to vote in the postseason Mumme Poll.
My reasoning is pretty simple here. First, I think we’ve already shown with the regular season results that approval voting is something that should be seriously considered as a means of reducing at least the appearance of bias and conflicts of interest in the voting by the coaches. I don’t think the postseason ballot is going to make any difference on this.
So what I’m left with is one aesthetic issue and one issue related to the experiment. With regard to the former, I don’t like the idea of having a tie for the number one slot at season’s end and I suspect that would be likely to happen, given the probability that the winners of at least three of the BCS games will appear on everyone’s ballots.
Speaking of ties, that leads into the second issue. I’d like to see if expanding the voting pool lessens the number of ties in the balloting (also, though not as important, I’m curious to see if it has the effect of expanding the number of teams receiving votes), which is why I’d like to encourage those that missed a vote to jump back in again. (Although I suppose by that reasoning, you could make an argument that I should let anyone vote who wants to participate.)
Let me know what you think about this. Bowl season kicks off on Saturday, and there is one ranked team in the action (#16 BYU), so I’d like to say at this point that unless I receive some very strong feedback to the contrary before then, what you see above are the ground rules we’ll be going by to finish out this season.
Get The Picture 
Sounds like a good plan to me. Thanks again for creating this poll as I have really enjoyed participating in the experiment this season. I think we have gone a long way to proving the value of approval voting.
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I do like the idea of approval voting all the way through. I don’t understand the logic of using the BCS title game as our de facto national champion when those participants are decided on a ranking system and not approval based system. I guess that’s the best option available to us, but I feel that we could maintain the approval ranking and figure out a way to factor strength of schedule or something along those lines to break any ties at the top.
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No…Of course not…No…
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So in the end we did all this to let someone else decide who the Mumme Poll national champion is.
That’s the problem here. At some point you have to let people rank teams. We couldn’t use our poll to put together a NC game unless we have some computer thing or something else to break the ties in the top five.
Maybe you can figure someway out to let a computer or something be an objective component to do that.
But think about it, we just did all this voting and at the end of the day, we’re still choosing what the BCS decided for us was the National champion. We didn’t decide that, they did.
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Well, it was suggested in an e-mail to me that we split the final vote into three tiers: first, then the next four and finally the next seven.
I don’t have a problem with that, as it would seem to accomplish my goal of avoiding a tie at the top.
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Your idea worked as far as the system allowed it to.
It solved a lot of the problems with the polls, including some of the more infuriating ones. But what it won’t do with any more satisfaction than the existing polls is name a for-sure National Champion.
If that’s the goal there are simply going to have to be more games.
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I like the idea of having a vote one time to avoid ties at the top. The 1, 4, 7 idea seems to make the most sense under the circumstances. I don’t know how much administrative time it would take on your part, but I wonder if we could make the final ballots public after the bowl games similar to the final coaches poll. If nothing else, we could all send our final ballots in on spreadsheets to facilitate the process.
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Why should I have to choose UF or OU if I think Texas is best?
I voted in the Mumme Poll all year, the mumme Poll members never agreed to vote the winner of that game no. 1. In fact, our poll doesn’t clearly state either of those teams are better than Texas.
If I want to vote Texas no. 1 at the end, I think I should be allowed.
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Did you not see my response to you guys on this, or are you just hammering on me out of reflex? 🙂
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Why should the winner of the BCS title game be automatically #1?
If Oklahoma eeks out an ugly win over Florida, and Texas dominates their opponent, shouldn’t people be able to put Texas in the top spot?
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Hammering you out of reflex! 😛
Great blog, Senator. Merry Christmas!
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Have 2 tix for bowl
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Anyone interested??
770-827-9350
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Reflexology is one of my very favorite things!
Since I do not recognize any sort of National Champion for D1 CFB, mythical or otherwise, I also prefer just to have a vote for #1 with no recognition at all for calling anyone a NC until that title is earned on the field of play. Being voted #1 in opinion polls is different from earning a title. I recognize how small a minority I may be in, but I have to stick by my principles on this and I have never wavered before. To do otherwise is to grant the obstructionists to a playoff a victory.
I also feel voters who have participated in the Poll should be allowed to vote in the final poll. I do not think non-participants should be given a vote this year. I fully support an expansion of this poll, regardless of it’s name, to a more diverse group for next year. Keep up the good work Senator. By replacing one of my subscription sites with your blog, I have saved a significant amount of time daily while remaining current on topics of interest in CFB.
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Senator, I have written a post in support of the idea at my blog. Obviously, I agree with the three tier idea. Hopefully, those on the fence will let you (or me) know why they are leaning one way or another.
I’ll restrict to hammering you out of reflex about other stuff.
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Sorry Senator, but while you said you didn’t have a problem with it, I didn’t every think it was necessarily set in stone.
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No problem – I could have phrased it better.
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