Introduction
Unofficial BCS Fan Poll believes that the fans should be involved in deciding what team is crowned national champion and the teams selected for the top bowls. Why are only the head coaches and selected sports journalists allowed to make this selection? There are several million fans that can and should be allowed to participate.
Rules:
- Vote honorably.
- All newcomers must serve a minimum of 4 weeks in provisional status.*
- Once the 4 week period has passed, they must apply to become an official pollster where their 4-week voting period (or more) will be reviewed by the community. If deemed honorable by the community with a majority, they are then granted official pollster status.
- Any official vote can be challenged. If the community consensus agrees, the poll with be removed from official and the pollster will lose their status.**
- Vote regularly.
- You must vote weekly to retain your official pollster status. Only votes submitted by official pollsters on Sunday or Monday will count towards the site's poll for that week. An official pollster may submit a poll Tuesday through Thursday in order not to lose their official pollster status, but the poll will not count for that week's official poll.
- Failure to submit a poll in a week will cause an official pollster to lose their status. They are eligible to re-apply for status after two consecutive polling weeks after removal. (Brandon Rule)
Notes:
- * One-time exception was granted for users who registered prior to the 2007 season.
- ** Errors realized after the voting has closed but before any dishonorable vote claim will be corrected and forgiven unless routine.
- All polls are public at all times.
- Put your bias aside. Seriously. (Vote Honorably).
How to participate:
- Goto the forums and register.
- Vote, when the voting booth is open (Sundays and Mondays).
- Comply with these rules (always).
- Spread the word! (Thanks!)
Each individual ballot from an Official Pollster is combined in the same manner as the Coaches, AP, and Harris Poll. Each first place vote receives 25 points, each second place vote received 24 points, third place received 23 points and so forth, until the 25th place team gets 1 point. The points are combined and the team with the most points is #1, second most number of points is number 2 and so forth. After the end of the official voting period, and a reasonable amount of time to weed out any bad votes, the poll becomes official. You may also see the total votes involving the probationary voters that are not counted in the official poll, but this may include bad voters.
Help?
Want to help out with the concept? Post up, spread the word! Techy web people are also needed. Inquire within in the forums.
About this site
The concept of allowing fans to be involved in the BCS or having a top 25 fan poll isn't a new one, but it's the methodology of this site that makes us unique. Similiar to the open source software movement, by having everyone's poll open we can police eachother and clearly bad voters can be eliminated or never given the chance for their vote to officially count. This site has been completely developed including the software from the ground up by myself: Michael (aka MECU in the forums). I participated in a fan top 25 during the 2006 season on a college football forums fan site where the concept was similiar: Users had to show regular interest, everyone's ballot was public to allow scrutiny and new members had to go through a probationary period to ensure they were taking it serious. It occured to me during the season: Why doesn't the BCS do this? Why can't the millions of college football fans be a part of the BCS calculation? There are only 60 coaches and 114 Harris Pollstesr and 6 computers that decide everything? So I developed the site over the long, sometimes boring, off-season. This is the result. I'm not a web designer or software coder so there is no guarrantee and I know the minimalistic look and non-flashy view of the site leaves a lot to be desired (wanna help?), but the core content is there: Everyone can vote, if they take it serious and vote regularly.
Currently we are in a sustained growth phase, trying to get the word out about the concept. Once this site grows, I expect the community to be self governing with moderating the forums, reviewing all the polls submitted to ensure there isn't any funny business, and helping approve probationary voters to official pollster status. I'd also like the forums to become a great place to discuss college football, yet devoid of the things that are cancers to many other sites: Ruthless attacks on rivals and other nonesense. Arguments are welcome, gentlemanly (or gentlewomanly) conduct is required. A place to find out information about your opponent when travelling to away games, and of course, discuss which strength of schedule is the strongest and who deserves to be #1 and why.
A little about me: I'm a Colorado alumni and fan. Other teams I like: Navy, Colorado State (except for a week), Wyoming, Air Force. Teams I hate: Nebraska, Notre Dame, USC. I work full time as an engineer in Colorado and volunteer as an assistant football coach at a local high school.
