Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Heisman Watch: Too Close To Call?
Bradford, McCoy, Tebow In a Battle

I wanted to pull a Nate Silver 538.com on the Heisman voting, but oh well. Stick with StiffArmTrophy.com for updates on how individual ballots are coming in.

Here's how close it is:

*HeismanPundit.com's final straw poll went to Sam Bradford.

*The longstanding Scripps Howard straw poll went to Colt McCoy.

*If you dig into the StiffArmTrophy.com numbers, Tebow is leading in first-place votes among declared voters, but Bradford is still the projected winner, by a small margin well within a margin-of-error at this stage of revealed ballots.

*The official Heisman fan vote -- which you know is near and dear to me, despite only counting for 1 vote out of 870 voters...totally preposterous -- was intriguing: Fans picked Colt McCoy by a smidgen over Sam Bradford, with Javon Ringer in 3rd (way to stuff the ballots Michigan State fans!), Graham Harrell 4th and Tim Tebow 5th. (Tebow backlash much?)

In other words: Too close to call. And that's a good thing. Isn't this a lot more fun with the ending as unpredictable as it has ever been?

Voter geographic bias is a funny thing; these voters are supposed to be unbiased experts, yet you constantly see them breaking toward players in their home region. Rare is the Oklahoma-based writer who will say, "You know what? I think Tebow is better." It's some old-school homerism, right there. (Absurdly, Mark Kiszla gave Zac Robinson his No. 1 vote.)

That makes the regional voting patterns more intriguing: Bradford and McCoy are splitting votes in the Midwest and Southwest. The only question is whether voters are putting them 1-2, in one order or another, leaving Tebow 3rd (or even 4th, behind Graham Harrell). Or whether there is a decisive winner between Bradford and McCoy, with Tebow earning 2nd-place votes.

And for one more week, the virtual tie between Oklahoma and Texas will impact college football.

-- D.S.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Are you really cracking on voters for their biases in regards to their votes? You know, with you being overly bias toward Tebow?