How they Voted: AP Poll Analysis

Updated: Analysis on 11/1/09

This would be much more fun if Michigan were represented anywhere on any one of the ballots of the 60 Associated Press college football pollsters for 2009, but here’s some data nonetheless.

After reviewing each of the voters’ rankings here’s a few things that stuck out:

• Top Slots: With the exception of one voter, all of the writers have Florida, Alabama or Texas in their top three.  Jon Wilner on the San Jose Mercury News slotted the Longhorns #4 (and USC second).
• Trojans: Speaking of USC, they don’t have the widest standard deviation in the poll but it’s close.   Wilner’s #2 is the highest slot for Pete Carroll’s crew, with lowest going to Jay Tate of the Montgomery (AL) Advertiser who’s got the Trojans at #11.

Closer to home:

• Hawkeyes: Those who follow Brian Cook’s BlogPoll might know that Brian mgo-Tim himself slotted the Hawkeyes #2 this week.  Six have Iowa the highest at #4 while two of the biggest haters come from just up the road: Eric Hansen of the South Bend Tribune has them #12, and Pete DiPrimio of the Ft. Wayne (IN) News-Sentinel #11.  Here’s how everyone else voted for Iowa in Week 9.
• Penn State: Craig James was one of the first to show Michigan some love earlier this season, and this week he’s got some for Penn State, his #7 (he’s got Iowa #6).  Most voters have the Nittany Lions in the teens, with Wilner slotting them barely in the mix at #22.
• Ohio State: Hmm, guess who gave the Buckeyes the highest ranking last week?  Former Buckeye Kirk Herbstreit at #14 (along with John Clay of the Lexington (Ky) Herald). Buckeyes can send hate mail to Scott Wolf of the Los Angeles Daily News who didn’t think OSU was worthy of the Top 25 last week.
• Cincinnati: 59 of 60 voters slot the Bearcats in the top 10.  The exception is Glenn Guilbeau of Gannett Louisiana who’s got them all the way down at #14.

Regional Top 10

I tweaked the data set to assign a region for each voter.  I put the traditional Big 12 areas as “Central”, I think the rest is self-explanatory.  I took a guess as to the regional affiliation of the voters not tied to a regional newspaper, and also broke these into a “National” category.   Here’s how the top 10s differed:

Regional, Big 10 + Notre Dame: