MAC Blogger preseason poll

Update: Well Don't I feel like the media calling the 2000 election before all the absentee ballots were counted. Today I discovered that SBNation had added a new blog, I asked the blog (Hustle Belt) if they could sneak in a ballot and they were gracious enough to follow through. I have updated the polls below
 
Inspired by this tidbit from VanDelay:

It should be noted that beginning last year and continuing forward, those who were long-time members of the MAC News Media were denied an opportunity to vote under a new format proposed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Elton Alexander, their MAC beat writer -- VanDelay

It's August, and every passing hour between now and kickoff seems to get longer, so I put out an email to some of the active MAC Bloggers about doing an underground preseason poll. The response was pretty good and when all was said and done the preseason poll had eleven respondents.

I'm not going to bother doing this during the regular season, folks are way too busy and that niche is already filled by the MAC Blogger round table.

After close a week of being 'that guy' who sends out reminder email's I've finally got all the votes in and here are the results:

MAC East	Pts	Div	Conf	Bowl	High	Low
Temple	97	10	8	11	1st	2nd
Ohio	82	2	1	9	1st	3rd
Kent	58	0	0	4	2nd	7th
BG	50	0	0	1	3rd	5th
BUF	40	0	0	0	2nd	6th
Akron	11	0	0	0	5th	7th
Miami	11	0	0	0	5th	7th
MAC West	Pts	Div	Conf	Bowl	High	Low
NIU	95	9	3	12	1st	2nd
TOL	67	2	0	4	1st	5th
CMU	57	0	0	3	2nd	4th
WMU	53	1	0	3	1st	5th
BSU	27	0	0	1	2nd	6th
EMU	2	0	0	0	5th	6th

• Everyone seems to think that NIU is a lock for a bowl, they are the only team to get a bowl nod from every blogger, Temple was right behind them with ten selection. In the West only one team, EMU, received no bowl votes.
• Four Bloggers picked five MAC teams to go bowing, and two picked only three, the rest all expect four MAC teams to have post season fun.
• Temple received ten of twelve votes to win their division, NIU Received nine of twelve, Ohio and Toledo each drew two votes in their respective divisions, and WMU took one West.
• Seven Bloggers picked NIU versus Temple in the MAC Championship game with five of those picking Temple as the winner. The other MACC games were; Ohio versus NIU (Twice), Temple versus Toledo (Twice), and Temple Versus WMU (once).
• Temple may not have swept the Bowl bid selections but they did receive the most votes to win the MAC (9) with NIU (3) and Ohio (1) being the only other teams selected.
• Only one team (EMU) was unanimously picked to finish in the bottom two post of their division and only two teams (Temple, NIU) were picked to finish in the top two spots by all writers polled.
• Kent had the greatest spread of any team picked (5), Buffalo, WMU, Toledo, and Ball State (4) were also teams who were picked all over the spectrum.

Participating Blogs, always worth a read:

Blog (Listed alphabetically)	Focus
Bull Run	Buffalo
Eastern Michigan Eagles	EMU
Falcon Blog	BGSU
Fire Up Chips	CMU
Hustle Belt	MAC
Lets go Rockets	Toledo
Over The Pylon	Ball State
Rasor on the Zips	Akron
Red and Black Attack	NIU
Temple Football Forever	Temple
The MAC Daily	MAC
VanDelay	MAC

Blogger Awards:

Maverick: You're every one's problem. That's because every time you rank a team, you're unsafe (max average difference between his pick for a team and the average for that team)

• EMU Eagles - 1.077
• The MAC Daily - 0.756
• Falcon Blog - 0.667

John Q: Aside from taking an emergency room hostage which Blogger is most like you and me? (min average difference between his pick for a team and the average for that team)

• Temple Football Forever - 0.333
• Lets Go Rockets - 0.333
• VanDelay - 0.526

Homer: No beer and no TV make Homer go crazy, No beer and no TV make Homer go crazy, Picking Homer's team to lose make Homer go crazy (Greatest difference between the blogs pick for their team and the consensus pick)

• Over the Pylon - 2.7
• Razor on the Zips - 1.3
• Fire Up Chips - 1.2

Honorable mention to Eastern Michigan Eagles for being the only blog to not pick EMU last in the west.


Was there a point to this:

Well Yes and no, like most blogging endeavors this was purely done for amusement but given the fact that blogs cover the conference with more enthusiasm than the MSM beat writers out there it's interesting to see where they rank teams when compared to the print journalist

--- East Blog Poll ---	East Media Day ---	West Blog Poll ---	West Media Day
1 Temple(10) 97	1 Temple(17) 137	1 NIU (9) 96\5	1 NIU (15) 115
2 Ohio(2) 89	2 Ohio(3) 116	2 Toledo (2) 73	2 CMU(3) 83
3 Kent 64	3 Kent 94	3 CMU 62	3 WMU (2) 77
4 BGSU 55	4 BGSU 74	4 WMU (1) 58	4 Toledo 75
5 Buffalo 44	5 Miami 53	5 Ball State 29	5 Ball State 50
6 Akron 12	6 Buffalo 48	6 EMU 2	6 EMU 20
7 Miami 12	7 Akron 38

There is not a lot of difference, Bloggers feel a bit better about Buffalo and Toledo and are more down on MU.


Just the Facts: Here are the Ballots:

	FUC	BR	EMU	TMD	TFF	VD	ROZ	FB	OTP	LGR	RAB
TEM	1	2	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
OU	2	1	1	3	2	2	2	3	2	2	2
KSU	3	3	7	5	3	3	4	2	4	3	3
BG	5	5	3	4	4	5	3	4	3	4	4
BUF	4	4	4	2	5	4	6	5	5	5	6
AKR	6	7	5	6	7	6	5	7	6	7	7
MU	7	6	6	7	6	7	7	6	7	6	5
	FUC	BR	EMU	TMD	TFF	VD	ROZ	FB	OTP	LGR	RAB
NIU	1	1	1	2	1	1	1	2	1	1	1
TOL	5	2	4	1	2	2	3	3	3	2	4
CMU	2	3	3	3	3	3	4	4	4	3	3
WMU	3	4	2	4	4	5	2	1	5	4	2
BSU	4	5	6	5	5	4	5	5	2	5	5
EMU	6	6	5	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6