TOP 25

[K-Mack]

I think every Stagg Bowl I've seen since MUC-Trinity has been a hell of a matchup.

I agree.   Don't you wish that Trinity had had their QB!   

Yes. Would've liked to see Roy Hampton play that day. But it was exponentially more painful for him than it was for me to watch, so I try not to complain.

[Bob.Gregg]

Gotta love early polling.

Preseason #9 Central tosses a 41-0 shutout of Lakeland
Gets leapfrogged by idle Wabash in a walkover against the always tough "Open Date"

Similarly, PS#6 St. Johns scores 2-touchdown win over East Texas Baptist and gets jumped over by PS#7 Capital as a result of the Crusaders' 3-score win over Adrian...

Not to mention PS#20 Trinity's 30-point win over McMurry and the Tigers drop to 22 in the new poll...

Gotta love early polling, right Mssrs. Obama & McCain?

[Pat Coleman]

::shrug:: I'll take any poll of ours over any D-III poll produced by anyone else, any week of the year.

[Ralph Turner]

Gotta love early polling.

Preseason #9 Central tosses a 41-0 shutout of Lakeland
Gets leapfrogged by idle Wabash in a walkover against the always tough "Open Date"

Similarly, PS#6 St. Johns scores 2-touchdown win over East Texas Baptist and gets jumped over by PS#7 Capital as a result of the Crusaders' 3-score win over Adrian...

Not to mention PS#20 Trinity's 30-point win over McMurry and the Tigers drop to 22 in the new poll...

Gotta love early polling, right Mssrs. Obama & McCain?

Pre-season #19 thru #24 was separated by only 27 votes (basically one slot).

Trinity lost 6 votes (from 131 to 125) because the voters thought that they should have beaten McMurry by more.  Even if they had kept those 6 votes, they still would have only slotted at #22.

If McMurry does better than 2-8 this year, then we will know that TU beat a different team.  Improving on 2-8 may be hard this year in the ASC.

Mississippi College was the only team that drastically dropped in the first weekend!

The vote total between #18 and #25 is only 59 points.  Ordinarily, in the "Perfect Top 25", it should be 175 points!
 
It is still too early for me.

[Bob.Gregg]

 
It is still too early for me.

Ralph, THAT was my point exactly.

Pat, wasn't impuning THE only reputable D3 poll (and everything else) in any way.

[gordonmann]

Bob:

Keep in mind this is the first time individual voters can react to the poll at large and adjust their ballots.  Perhaps voters had a team slotted considerably higher or lower than the poll on the whole and reconsidered when they saw where everyone else had them.  I did that with UW-Eau Claire.

[K-Mack]

Well Bob has a right to be asking questions ... at least he's doing it in the right place.

two things.

First, to second what Gordon said, a lot has happened since the preseason poll and this week, and while game results primarily should affect the poll, there were things I read in Kickoff that affected my opinions. That information wasn't available to me or any other voter when we did the poll in early(?) August.

Second, I tried not to penalize Wesley for getting its game canceled, however I did end up penalizing its opponent, Christopher Newport, which I had the very bottom of my top 25, because I felt two teams I had on the fringe but didn't put on my preseason ballot played their way into the top 25, and even though CNU didn't play at all, and technically should not have been penalized, with the added data I now felt those teams were better and it bumped CNU off my ballot. So weird things can happen even to idle teams.

Oh, and third ... if the three teams you mentioned really had any gripe about their poll movement (I'm sure they didn't, it's just us) maybe they should have scheduled tougher opponents in Week 1. I wouldn't have a problem with a voter who said he learned more about the caliber of St. John Fisher getting beaten at Mount Union than he did about Trinity shellacking McMurry. Maybe that's an extreme example, but you get the picture, no?

Just some things to think about and discuss.

[DutchFan2004]

Well Bob has a right to be asking questions ... at least he's doing it in the right place.

two things.

First, to second what Gordon said, a lot has happened since the preseason poll and this week, and while game results primarily should affect the poll, there were things I read in Kickoff that affected my opinions. That information wasn't available to me or any other voter when we did the poll in early(?) August.

Second, I tried not to penalize Wesley for getting its game canceled, however I did end up penalizing its opponent, Christopher Newport, which I had the very bottom of my top 25, because I felt two teams I had on the fringe but didn't put on my preseason ballot played their way into the top 25, and even though CNU didn't play at all, and technically should not have been penalized, with the added data I now felt those teams were better and it bumped CNU off my ballot. So weird things can happen even to idle teams.

Oh, and third ... if the three teams you mentioned really had any gripe about their poll movement (I'm sure they didn't, it's just us) maybe they should have scheduled tougher opponents in Week 1. I wouldn't have a problem with a voter who said he learned more about the caliber of St. John Fisher getting beaten at Mount Union than he did about Trinity shellacking McMurry. Maybe that's an extreme example, but you get the picture, no?

Just some things to think about and discuss.

Could this be a trap by K-Mack?  I will bite.  How do you schedule a tougher opponent that a Bye?  One of the three teams mentioned played a game (Central) and got leap frogged by Wabash.  Now having said this I was shocked that Central was in the top ten to begin with.  (I have no problem with the current ranking) I agree that Lakeland is not a powerhouse  playoff caliber team but neither is the dreaded bye team.  You mentioned scheduling.  It is not really easy to schedule teams when you start to have some success.  I have heard rumors from others and none that are directly connected to Central but seems some of the opponents that we have had in the past years would not play us any more.  You have to take the teams that are willing to play you.  So IMHO your comment about scheduling seems to not account for this factor.   

[Pat Coleman]

I think the factors he references under "first" are what apply most to Central.

[DutchFan2004]

That might be.  A team with only a few starters back are an unknown.

[K-Mack]

Central's position on my ballot (if they were/are even on it) actually improved with the win over Lakeland, and it's true, teams known as traditionally strong programs sometimes have trouble scheduling. If you've been kicking some team's butt for several years and they manned up to play you then but got tired of it, hard to get mad at them, don't you think? Maybe other teams of a similar caliber should be filling that slot. Not saying it's easy, but you look at Ohio Northern playing North Central this week or St. John Fisher going to Mount Union or Hardin-Simmons and La Crosse. It can be done.

I don't know why Wabash leapfrogged Central in particular, but the point remains ... voters know a lot more about these teams than they did when the preseason vote was taken. In theory you'd think Week 1 was all that matters, but unknowns becoming knowns in camp, information disseminated through Kickoff AND Week 1 performance might all be factors. And even within just Week 1 alone, voters' opinions can change on things like quality of competition (regardless of why you couldn't get a top opponent) not just final score.

Oh, and everything's a trap designed to foster discussion. You should know that by now. I think we all learn from each other.

[DutchFan2004]

Central's position on my ballot (if they were/are even on it) actually improved with the win over Lakeland, and it's true, teams known as traditionally strong programs sometimes have trouble scheduling. If you've been kicking some team's butt for several years and they manned up to play you then but got tired of it, hard to get mad at them, don't you think? Maybe other teams of a similar caliber should be filling that slot. Not saying it's easy, but you look at Ohio Northern playing North Central this week or St. John Fisher going to Mount Union or Hardin-Simmons and La Crosse. It can be done.

I don't know why Wabash leapfrogged Central in particular, but the point remains ... voters know a lot more about these teams than they did when the preseason vote was taken. In theory you'd think Week 1 was all that matters, but unknowns becoming knowns in camp, information disseminated through Kickoff AND Week 1 performance might all be factors. And even within just Week 1 alone, voters' opinions can change on things like quality of competition (regardless of why you couldn't get a top opponent) not just final score.

Oh, and everything's a trap designed to foster discussion. You should know that by now. I think we all learn from each other.

Your points are all on target as usual.  The one thing that was not addressed is Wabash having a bye and moving up.  I think that voters after reading the kick off addition may have more info and yes that might infleuence decisions after week one but I would think the on the field results would be taken into account.  Since Wabash did not play they really have only a list of players that showed up for camp and not game results.  Just curious on how voters can say that Wabash is better than they expected as they have not even strapped it up yet.  They moved up 43 points or about 1.5 places on each voters ballots.  Central on the other hand shut out a team and they hadn't done that for over a year.  I know the competition was not great but We didn't shut out Hope or ST Thomas last year in non conference games either.  If voters wanted a 60 point showing I doubt that they ever get that out of Central at least not a home game.  Central substituted early and really after the first drive of the second half almost ran the ball exclusively.  In the 4th qtr Lakeland was loading it up and didn't really shut us down.  Central loses 7 points so they really didn't move all that much.  That is not even .25 per voter.  So the question isn't really with Central performance the point totals show or at least that is how I read it.  How does a team improve two spots by not playing a game is my question.  I mean as a voter how does it happen.  The only team that lost was SJF against MUC I can understand saying ok maybe they didn't belong there and Wabash maybe is better after the showing (not saying Wabash would have done better against MUC but understandable that they move down. Thats 25 point for Wabash 1 from every voter.  There are still 35 points left to go for Wabashes leap with out a down of football to go on.  If you can make sense out of it I am willing to listen and there could be logical reasons.  I am not trying to beat up any voter just trying to get educated.  K-Mack you and Pat always have solid answers and I think your polls are the best because you guys take the time and you worry more about getting things right than trying to placate people.

[Pat Coleman]

Your points are all on target as usual.  The one thing that was not addressed is Wabash having a bye and moving up. 

Well, anytime someone moves down, someone else has to move up. Just because Wabash didn't play doesn't mean that voters couldn't have become more confident in them based on Kickoff or less confident in someone around Wabash.

[Ralph Turner]

Dutchfan, I think that Wabash picked up the SJF vote.  With MUC/JCU and the OAC having been moved east for a couple of playoffs this decade, (or the eastern half of the North Region drawing from western NY), I think that Wabash got slotted in as the third best team in that part of the country, as strange as it seems,  filling SJF's slot [sic].

I think that the West Region may have taken a minor hit at the same time.  ETBU's game versus SJU and HSU's game versus UW-LAX boosted the ASC and did not help the West.  I think that those two games allowed the 1.5 position jump by Wabash.

I am glad to see your analysis actually looking at total votes and not the ordinal ranking. 

(Wow, those Central fans are just chomping at the bits to redeem that 2007 Regional Finals loss!        )

[DutchFan2004]

Dutchfan, I think that Wabash picked up the SJF vote.  With MUC/JCU and the OAC having been moved east for a couple of playoffs this decade, (or the eastern half of the North Region drawing from western NY), I think that Wabash got slotted in as the third best team in that part of the country, as strange as it seems,  filling SJF's slot [sic].

I think that the West Region may have taken a minor hit at the same time.  ETBU's game versus SJU and HSU's game versus UW-LAX boosted the ASC and did not help the West.  I think that those two games allowed the 1.5 position jump by Wabash.

I am glad to see your analysis actually looking at total votes and not the ordinal ranking. 

(Wow, those Central fans are just chomping at the bits to redeem that 2007 Regional Finals loss!        )

Not really.  I think that any team that gets jumped in this situation I would be asking about.  It is not just Central.  I am not secure in the fact that after our losses to graduation we should be this high.  Having said that it is early and some one has to be.  The huge test is in two weeks for the Dutch that will clear many things up for the voters and myself after the Wartburg game.  I saw that SJF lost 95 points yes 65 points went to Wabash or you can deduce that a portion of them had to.  One thing I have drawn from this (and I am not a math major but I can add and do some analysis) there must be a wide range of where the voters have teams outside maybe 1-3.