Well, some of y’all checked out after the SECCG. The number of voters this week plummeted to 239, by far the lowest of the season.
Those that voted tended to distill their choices. The average number of teams on a given ballot was down to 5.3. Keep in mind that only two weeks ago, that number was almost seven. 52 teams received at least one vote. (Believe it or not, one of those teams is Florida.)
Here’s how our final top 25 of 2021 played out:
And here’s how the selection committee’s top 25 looks:
The order may be a little different, but there’s a high degree of correlation, overall. You have to go all the way down to 13th in the MP before you find a team (UTSA) not on the selection committee’s list and 14th (Oregon), vice versa. When you throw this into the mix…
… it’s hard to justify the current arrangement. Approval voting is easier and has less of an appearance of bias/conflict of interest, not to mention eliminating the costly trips to a Texas resort and awkward explanation’s from the committee’s chairman.
That’s particularly true with regard to selection of the four-team playoff field.
Conference breakdown:
Voters from Georgia made up 61.3% of the total pool.
Again, thanks to all who contributed in making the MP go this year. I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the efforts of my partner in crime, Peyton, who was the man behind the scenes making this puppy work smoothly.
Approval voting works.
Get The Picture 
Awesome work on the MP as usual to both of you!
The committee sucks.
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I don’t really get what this is so I never did it.
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There’s always next season. 😉
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Here’s what the 12-team playoff would look like:
1) Bama
2) Michigan
3) Cincinnati
4) Baylor
5) Georgia
6) Notre Dame
7) Ohio State
8) Ole Miss
9) Oklahoma State
10) Michigan State
11) Utah
12) Pitt
Play-in
Pitt@UGA
Utah@ND
MSU@OhSU
OkSU@Ole Miss
Quarters (based on my thoughts on winners)
UGA/Baylor
Utah/Cincy
OhSU/UM
OleMiss/Bama
Semis
UGA/Bama
Cincy/OhioSt
Championship
Bama/OhioSt
Champion – Bama
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Agree with your ordering which results in 4 rematches and back doors tOSU to lose to Bama. Yay. Any of those “interesting” matchups can be done via the bowl system and save the kids from a 17 game season.
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In particular, put Ohio State and Michigan on a neutral field on a fast track with no weather effect, and that game is different than the outcome in Ann Arbor. Michigan earned the win over Ohio State and wouldn’t want to see them again.
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I confess that I didn’t vote in this last poll. I just didn’t feel like I would be fair to Georgia after last Saturday. Looks like I wasn’t the only one.
Approval voting works here, no doubt. But I am skeptical of the system on a national scale. I think it works here because there is a captive group of relatively engaged fans who want it to work. And none of us have a monetary interest in the outcome. Finding a similar group is going to be hard to do in a national poll, imo. You suggest we should move to a system which is “some sort of amalgamation of computer analysis, combined with approval voting by a large pool of voters.”
We have had experience with computers and it’s not terrible, but not all positive, either, as David Shaw has noted, the computers don’t program themselves (not yet, anyway). So, a ‘people’ balance of the computers with approval voting by a large pool of voters might be a good idea. But what people? Who chooses them? If gerrymandering goes on in actual politics, what makes you think it wouldn’t happen in football?
Don’t get me wrong: I want it to work. I also want it to be called the Mumme Poll. I also want to win the Powerball. 😉
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I didn’t vote for the first time either. It’s similar to you, felt rushed into a result. I know we have a great team and a great program and a great staff, what I saw Sat was a pedestrian team getting it’s ass beat. At this point in the season a team should be peaking. Our display was “less than” against a championship caliber team and I am not convinced that being in the final four will look any different.
At this moment I would have AL, OH, MI, CIN as a top four. I don’t see us beating OSU in a dome with their passing attack, let alone MI. I just didn’t want to do it in the poll.
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Georgia at #4 in the Mumme poll as opposed to #3 in the CFP is possibly a result of the high dropout rate of Dawg fans who checked out from grief, remaining bitter Dawg fans and haters. It’s good to see the Dawgs still garner enough respect to remain top four.
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I’m not bitter or a hater. I didn’t put Georgia on my final ballot because I only voted for 3 teams – Bama, Michigan and Cincinnati. The team that played the previous night was not national champion worthy, and we are lucky Oklahoma State couldn’t get 1 yard when it mattered. If we had lost a close, hard-fought game, I probably would have kept the Dawgs on my ballot. Throughout the year, I only had 2 teams on every ballot – Bama and Cincy. Michigan didn’t appear on my ballot until the week before the Ohio State game.
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The Dawgs beat the shit out of eleven of the thirteen teams they play, win twelve and drop the last one to the perennially best team in the modern era so you leave them out of the playoffs. Yet you’re seeking tickets to the Orange Bowl? Yeah, I don’t get it.
Some of the boys are confused.
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I didn’t vote for 4 teams. It doesn’t mean I don’t think Georgia is one of the 4 best teams. I just omitted them from my ballot because they didn’t win the conference and they looked really bad in the most important game of the season. On tickets, I had to put in my post-season request weeks ago. I will say I’m not going to spend scalped prices for the game.
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Thanks, Senator & Peyton for your work on the poll this year. Approval voting could work on a larger scale. Yes, there will be biases but no one is without one bias or another regardless, so this works as well as any system in my view, and without all the travel, hotels and hoopla.
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