Category: 
My personal prediction for the Heisman was off, but the The HeismanPundit.com Heisman Poll–which was the most accurate of all the polls in 2008–looked pretty good in 2009, too, despite having to project an obviously close and unpredictable race.
Final HeismanPundit.com Heisman Poll, Dec. 7, 2009
1. Mark Ingram
2. Toby Gerhart
3. Colt McCoy
Ndamukong Suh
5. Kellen Moore
6. Tim Tebow
C.J. Spiller
8. Golden Tate
9. LaMichael James
10. Case Keenum
Jeremiah Masoli
Actual Final Heisman Results
1. Mark Ingram
2. Toby Gerhart
3. Colt McCoy
4. Ndamukong Suh
5. Tim Tebow
6. C.J. Spiller
7. Kellen Moore
8. Case Keenum
9. Mardy Gilyard
10. Golden Tate
The first four in the HP poll and the final results are basically the same. The discrepancies come after that, with Moore fifth in the HP poll and seventh in the actual results, Tebow fifth in the actual but tied for sixth in the HP poll, Golden Tate eighth in the HP poll but 10th in the actual results and Case Keenum eighth in the actual results but 10th in the HP poll. Plus, the HP poll had no mention of Mardy Gilyard but did included LaMichael James and Jeremiah Masoli.
Past HeismanPundit.com Heisman Poll Results
2008
Projected: 1. Sam Bradford 2. Tim Tebow 3. Colt McCoy 4. Graham Harrell 5. Michael Crabtree
Actual: 1. Sam Bradford 2. Colt McCoy 3. Tim Tebow 4. Graham Harrell 5. Michael Crabtree
2007
Projected: 1. Tim Tebow 2. Darren McFadden 3. Colt Brennan 4. Chase Daniel 5. Dennis Dixon
Actual: 1. Tim Tebow 2. Darren McFadden 3. Colt Brennan 4. Chase Daniel 5. Dennis Dixon
Comments
This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Heismanpundit Heisman Poll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Curious, HP–I don’t know if it’s even workable, but do you try to maintain some sort of regional balance in your poll?
It seems like a weekly poll that had an even distribution, say 3 voters from each of the 6 regions, would be–relatively speaking–fairly representative of the voting population at large.
The reason I think my poll works is because it has a different distribution than others.
There are three from the West, three from the Soutwest, two from the Midwest, four from the Northeast and one from the South.
At first glance, that would appear to be apportioned poorly.
However, my apportionment is better because it is based on style of voter.
We have:
4 beat team/regional beat writers or columnists, which provides a more localized angle, obviously (Greenstein and Hamilton of the Chicago Trib, Carlson of The Oklahoman, Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel)
5 national beat writers, which provides a bigger, though expert, picture
(Mandel, Feldman, Dienhart, Buchanon, myself)
1 national feature writer, promotes an even broader picture
(Murphy of Sports Illustrated)
2 magazine editors, which helps us represent those voters who are less involved in the day to day of the race.
(Schecter of SI, Morris of ESPN)
1 somewhat older voter who covers both basketball and football and sort of represents the old school, traditional voter
(Weiss of the NY Daily News)
So, my voters are distributed more by how in-tune they are with the race than by region. I feel it gives us a better representative sample. My own HP Heisman Watch tries to adjust the sample for the regions, but it obviously doesn’t always work out.
I do think it would be better to grab a couple more votes to round it out a bit better, but I think too big a sample just might piss off the Heisman Trust.
One from the South…not too surprised…HP never been too down with the SEC!