The Quizbowl Resource Center

No it's the one from Georgia who is pretty awesome, yet not enough people voted for them. I put them ahead of Alpharetta, actually.

rmgeokid wrote:Does anyone know if the Centennial listed in the bottom section is Maryland's Centennial? And if so, who voted for them and why?

My understanding is that is Centennial (GA), noted pretty good team.

The Georgia one.

Edit: Whoa.

That would be a fault in my ranking. I ranked Alpharetta because I had heard of them and knew they were one of the best in Georgia, but failed to consider any other Georgia team. That wasn't smart.

Also, I find it funny my team is exactly where I ranked them. But who put us at 14!?? I don't believe we deserve that high at all.

Edit: Wrong word.

Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

I think Maggie Walker and State College this year are the undisputed favorites to win NSC and HSNCT this year. It seems that all it really comes down to are the finals matches for them. Perhaps we should forgo all this playoff nonsense and just institute a BCS system this year. This year's national championship: State College vs Maggie Walked in an 8 round fight for supremacy. In all seriousness though, I think watching the playoffs play out will be very, very interesting.

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

I think Maggie Walker and State College this year are the undisputed favorites to win NSC and HSNCT this year. It seems that all it really comes down to are the finals matches for them. Perhaps we should forgo all this playoff nonsense and just institute a BCS system this year. This year's national championship: State College vs Maggie Walked in an 8 round fight for supremacy. In all seriousness though, I think watching the playoffs play out will be very, very interesting.

I think we all need to watch out for LASA. In light of their recent performance at ACF Winter, I feel that I ranked them much too low. In my opinion, they are the #3 team in the nation.

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

Congrats! We got votes for the first time as well!
When can we see the ballots? I would like to see who voted for us.

tk447 wrote:

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

Congrats! We got votes for the first time as well!
When can we see the ballots? I would like to see who voted for us.

I think I did. I forgot where I placed Bellarmine though.

Inkana7 wrote:

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

I think Maggie Walker and State College this year are the undisputed favorites to win NSC and HSNCT this year. It seems that all it really comes down to are the finals matches for them. Perhaps we should forgo all this playoff nonsense and just institute a BCS system this year. This year's national championship: State College vs Maggie Walked in an 8 round fight for supremacy. In all seriousness though, I think watching the playoffs play out will be very, very interesting.

I think we all need to watch out for LASA. In light of their recent performance at ACF Winter, I feel that I ranked them much too low. In my opinion, they are the #3 team in the nation.

I don't know... having personally seen teams like St. Anselm's, Georgetown Day School, and Hunter several times this year... and knowing quite a bit about Dorman and Southside who i believe are better... there are a few other incredible teams that play more tournaments than them, wrote more questions than them, and score higher on PPB than them. But nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

Inkana7 wrote:

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

I think Maggie Walker and State College this year are the undisputed favorites to win NSC and HSNCT this year. It seems that all it really comes down to are the finals matches for them. Perhaps we should forgo all this playoff nonsense and just institute a BCS system this year. This year's national championship: State College vs Maggie Walked in an 8 round fight for supremacy. In all seriousness though, I think watching the playoffs play out will be very, very interesting.

I think we all need to watch out for LASA. In light of their recent performance at ACF Winter, I feel that I ranked them much too low. In my opinion, they are the #3 team in the nation.

I don't know... having personally seen teams like St. Anselm's, Georgetown Day School, and Hunter several times this year... and knowing quite a bit about Dorman and Southside who i believe are better... there are a few other incredible teams that play more tournaments than them, wrote more questions than them, and score higher on PPB than them. But nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

Except that Dorman, St. Anselm's, and GDS didn't score higher PPB than LASA did on Winter, and Southside barely edged them out. I voted them 3rd.

Journey to the Planets wrote:

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

Inkana7 wrote:

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Hey, Pensacola got a vote !

I think Maggie Walker and State College this year are the undisputed favorites to win NSC and HSNCT this year. It seems that all it really comes down to are the finals matches for them. Perhaps we should forgo all this playoff nonsense and just institute a BCS system this year. This year's national championship: State College vs Maggie Walked in an 8 round fight for supremacy. In all seriousness though, I think watching the playoffs play out will be very, very interesting.

I think we all need to watch out for LASA. In light of their recent performance at ACF Winter, I feel that I ranked them much too low. In my opinion, they are the #3 team in the nation.

I don't know... having personally seen teams like St. Anselm's, Georgetown Day School, and Hunter several times this year... and knowing quite a bit about Dorman and Southside who i believe are better... there are a few other incredible teams that play more tournaments than them, wrote more questions than them, and score higher on PPB than them. But nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

Except that Dorman, St. Anselm's, and GDS didn't score higher PPB than LASA did on Winter...

I was just throwing those names around, they aren't necessarily better but they/you all play against higher quality teams all year long...

...and Southside barely edged them out. I voted them 3rd.

...and that's why i voted them ahead (for among other reasons).

Having played several teams on this list in the past 8 months, I can safely say that I would have LASA as a top 10 ten team even if they improved only a little from the end of last year. When we played them in the 11th place game at HSNCT last May, we won a fantastic match on the last bonus as time expired. When I found out 3 (or perhaps all 4 - I can't remember - perhaps Coach Flowers or Thomas could correct what my memory can't precisely recall) of their players were juniors last year, I was obviously very impressed and knew they would be a force this year. It took everything we had to beat them, and we had 3 very good seniors (and 1 very good junior) on our team last year.

Anyway, even though we played LASA last school year, considering how much of their team returned, I would have them higher on this list and in the top 5 teams that my team has played in the past 8 months. Others in that top 5 would be: Maggie Walker (also returned most of their scoring from last year), Dorman A, Southside A, DCC, and Alpharetta. As for Centennial (the one in GA): they have a very solid team that is quite quick to what they know without making hardly any mistakes. Unfortunately, I don't know if they will go to many more tournaments this year, including Nationals, which is a real shame.

RountreeCHS wrote:...DCC,

Eh, we beat them earlier this year at Penn. Maybe they had a bad game, but i don't know if CR can beat an actual top 5 or 10 team.

and Alpharetta.

Really? They have one very awesome player, but what's the rest of the team like? Is there solid help for him?

As for Centennial (the one in GA): they have a very solid team that is quite quick to what they know without making hardly any mistakes. Unfortunately, I don't know if they will go to many more tournaments this year, including Nationals, which is a real shame.

Why is that exactly? That is a shame!

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

RountreeCHS wrote:...DCC,

Eh, we beat them earlier this year at Penn. Maybe they had a bad game, but i don't know if CR can beat an actual top 5 or 10 team.

and Alpharetta.

Really? They have one very awesome player, but what's the rest of the team like? Is there solid help for him?

He said top five team that he played, not actual top five team.

As for my actual thoughts, I would say that Eden Prairie is underrated. I din't fill out a ballot, and do not know their PPB or anything, but this team is really, really good. They have four guys that are amazingly balanced, meaning that unlike GDS, if one person is off, it does not drag them down. I would rank them as the third best high school team I've played, behind last year's Charter and Maggie Walker.

I would also jump on the LASA bandwagon, and in particular would question how anybody could rank these guys outside of the top ten.

BG MSL Champs wrote:

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

RountreeCHS wrote:...DCC,

Eh, we beat them earlier this year at Penn. Maybe they had a bad game, but i don't know if CR can beat an actual top 5 or 10 team.

and Alpharetta.

Really? They have one very awesome player, but what's the rest of the team like? Is there solid help for him?

He said top five team that he played, not actual top five team.

Ah, okay, well in that case, yep.

I would also jump on the LASA bandwagon, and in particular would question how anybody could rank these guys outside of the top ten.

To give a biased opinion to try to understand the bias of others... because they're from Texas, and no one from Texas has done extremely well (top 5 or so) in any respected national tournament as far as i know, at least not recently. There's a whole lot of regional bias here. When you see the ballots revealed, you're going to notice people who totally a) overcompensated and overvalued the "Mid-Atlantic" whatever we're calling it, or b) completely ignored states or regions like California and the Midwest just because they're not from there and assume they can't be as good. Previous recognition and achievement also goes a long way... that's the only way that somebody, honestly, could vote for a team like DCC in front of St. Anselm's, when by looking at these stats here it's obvious that they're a better team, even if almost nobody knew who they were last year and DCC has been doing this "good quizbowl" thing since many posters here were still in day care.

Well, yeah, these polls are definitely imperfect. I've always felt uncomfortable ranking teams from California when I've never even seen them play. I'm likely to overvalue the midatlantic.

First of all, I'd like to thank people for saying nice things about us. We did return all 5 of our players from HSNCT 2009, and 4 of those are juniors this year. I personally am not sure where I would rank us - we've had some quality wins this year on the college circuit (thank goodness Henry, Zach and Chris ended up at Rice), and I know the guys have improved a lot since last year. That said, I think many questions will be answered on Feb. 27, and not just about LASA. With the likes of State College, Dorman, Charter, St. Anselms, GDS, et. al. along with LASA at Prison Bowl, I'm guessing we'll know a lot more about the national picture then.

Cassian wrote:With the likes of State College, Dorman, Charter, St. Anselms, GDS, et. al. along with LASA at Prison Bowl, I'm guessing we'll know a lot more about the national picture then.

Good point.

Will this be the most competitive regular season high school tournament of all time? The only ones that i know of that can even challenge are last year's QuAC I (my frontrunner), this year's QuAC II... and another one or two that i guess i can't think of.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

Cassian wrote:With the likes of State College, Dorman, Charter, St. Anselms, GDS, et. al. along with LASA at Prison Bowl, I'm guessing we'll know a lot more about the national picture then.

Good point.

Will this be the most competitive regular season high school tournament of all time? The only ones that i know of that can even challenge are last year's QuAC I (my frontrunner), this year's QuAC II... and another one or two that i guess i can't think of.

If you count either Weekend of Quizbowl, those come pretty close to the Prison Bowl/Penn Gold Standard.

Oh, yeah, i forgot about those... well those tournaments were kinda specifically catered to those teams, but yes, those were pretty darn competitive of course, as well.

BG MSL Champs wrote:He said top five team that he played, not actual top five team.

Yeah, sorry if I was unclear Coach Chrzanowski. Those teams would be the top 5 (actually top 6) teams we have played in the past few months. Obviously, if we were in the mid-Atlantic playing TJ, MLWGS, Charter, St. Anselm's, WJ, CR, HC, and SC every other weekend, I would have a quite different perspective for sure. (As would likely be the case if I were a coach in California or Minnesota). I am just going by what I have seen with my own eyes in regard to who is the best out of the teams we have played recently (last 6-8 months). Like LASA, I would absolutely include MLWGS in any top 5 list even though we haven't played them this year; Lord knows we played them enough at the HSNCT last year (http://naqt.com/stats/team-performance. ... m_id=16188) to know how good they are (were going to be).

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:Really? They have one very awesome player, but what's the rest of the team like? Is there solid help for him?

William is a fantastic player and the closest thing we have to a true generalist in the state (and he is a junior). He has some help on his team, but is primarily a one-man wrecking crew. As I have always stated, you need 2 really good players, at least, to be the best.

Frater Taciturnus wrote:If you count either Weekend of Quizbowl, those come pretty close to the Prison Bowl/Penn Gold Standard.

Other than Nationals, WOQ were easily 2 of the most competitive tournaments we have ever been to.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:No it's the one from Georgia who is pretty awesome, yet not enough people voted for them. I put them ahead of Alpharetta, actually.

I put them ahead of us, too. We haven't played head-to-head, but at the two tournaments we've been at they've finished higher than us (by one spot both times). At this point in the season it's hard to tell, but I'd say they're a bit better than us.

BG MSL Champs wrote:As for my actual thoughts, I would say that Eden Prairie is underrated.

I agree. I had them at #8 on my ballot. They don't have a lot of stats from this year, but they did really well at ACF Fall and have been going to other college tournaments.

I feel like the poll is seriously inaccurate in regards to Southern teams. The best explanation I can come up with is that, because of a lack of stats from the region, many people based votes off the preseason poll. How else could DuPont Manual end up ranked 23rd, despite losing to Dorman B at Brookwood? Or Hoover end up 12th, despite losses to us (though I think they were missing players), Dorman B, and Ezell-Harding? Also, I think Centennial deserved to be in the top 20 based on their high finishes at Walton, Brookwood, and Chattahoochee (their only losses coming to Southside and Dorman).

When ranking teams I was not familiar with, I was not able to figure out for most of them what their strongest lineups were, and in the case of a few schools, such as duPont Manual, I couldn't find any stats, so I sort of went with what I had at the beginning of the year and put them down spots from the last ranking. I also did this for teams that are in a "weaker" region, such as Eden Prairie and LASA (I forget where I ranked them though).

The only team that I feel like should have been on my poll for sure was Torrey Pines, after seeing Stephen on IRC a few weeks after I submitted my poll.

AlphaQuizBowler wrote: I feel like the poll is seriously inaccurate in regards to Southern teams. The best explanation I can come up with is that, because of a lack of stats from the region, many people based votes off the preseason poll. How else could DuPont Manual end up ranked 23rd, despite losing to Dorman B at Brookwood? Or Hoover end up 12th, despite losses to us (though I think they were missing players), Dorman B, and Ezell-Harding? Also, I think Centennial deserved to be in the top 20 based on their high finishes at Walton, Brookwood, and Chattahoochee (their only losses coming to Southside and Dorman).

I was at Brookwood and faced off against duPont Manual. They told me they were missing their 2 best players and only lost by one question (my friend tells me) to Dorman B, who is talented.

Sorry, my mistake: they had one of them; however, they were missing their top scorer and captain (Shray, or something like that)

AlphaQuizBowler wrote: How else could DuPont Manual end up ranked 23rd, despite losing to Dorman B at Brookwood?

They were missing their best player at Brookwood.

Also, I think Centennial deserved to be in the top 20 based on their high finishes at Walton, Brookwood, and Chattahoochee (their only losses coming to Southside and Dorman).

With the exception of really good teams like Dorman and Southside, success (I guess defined as a top 4 finish) at these tournaments rarely translates into success at national tournaments.

But I do agree that Dorman B was underrated by the voters.

Huang wrote:

Also, I think Centennial deserved to be in the top 20 based on their high finishes at Walton, Brookwood, and Chattahoochee (their only losses coming to Southside and Dorman).

With the exception of really good teams like Dorman and Southside, success (I guess defined as a top 4 finish) at these tournaments rarely translates into success at national tournaments.

Last year, Brookwood (1st at Walton and 2nd at Chattahoochee), finished 14th at NSC and t11th at HSNCT. Chattahoochee (2nd at Walton) finished 17th at NSC and t7th at HSNCT. Walton (3rd at Chattahoochee) finished 11th at NSC and t17th at HSNCT. Even disregarding tournament finish, Centennial still has wins against Dorman B, Central Gwinnett, Ezell-Harding, and Brookwood.

SoLegit12 wrote:Sorry, my mistake: they had one of them; however, they were missing their top scorer and captain (Shray, or something like that)

Shray Kapoor is an awesome player. Manual is deep, but not having him in a match would make a big difference.

In regards to Hoover, we have lost head-to-head twice to Alpharetta, who has a very good team this year, but haven't had the opportunity for a return match since the losses, which were in the first tourney of the year (the William Rufus King @ Univ. of Alabama), and on an NAQT A-set. At that tourney, we beat Dorman B head-to-head and dropped a close match to Dorman A. At CATT V , we lost to Dorman B while playing with only two of our starters, but made it easily to the quarters with just those two. We also dropped a match to Ezell-Harding at Brookwood in the playoffs, where we just weren't fast enough. Still, if you look at our NAQT IS-set record and our play on similar house sets, we perform much better on those, so maybe that counted for something in some people's eyes.

I don't think we've played enough outside of our region this year to be rated as highly as we were in this poll, and I think that at the moment, Alpharetta probably should be rated ahead of us. They would have been on my ballot, if I had put one in, but since Hoover hasn't gotten out of the southeast and has only had a few opportunities to play the teams that I knew were figuring in this poll, I didn't feel like I could make a fair evaluation of any of the squads beyond what I've seen. That said, we're going to be at PACE-NSC for the first time this year, and I'm eager to see how our full squad does against the best in the nation. It ought to be an education for us, to be sure.

William, good luck with the rest of your season. I know that my kids would very much like to get that rematch before the end of the year, but if we don't, we'll see you and the Alpharetta crew at PACE. Meanwhile, I'm gratified that any team out of Alabama is good enough to get mentioned without the words "tire fire" in the post.

Oops. Oh, well.

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Even disregarding tournament finish, Centennial still has wins against Dorman B, Central Gwinnett, Ezell-Harding, and Brookwood.

I only see Dorman B (and possibly Central Gwinnett? I've never heard of them until this year. Then again, I never heard of St. Anselm until last year) out of that group as being strong (top 25ish I guess) this year at nationals. I don't think I've seen stats for Ezell-Harding at any of the two nationals before. My experience playing their team is that they're better at speed questions. And the question quality of those three tournaments you listed are also dubious (given the questions are never released online for widespread perusal and the questions I've seen are subpar at best relative to NSC) with maybe the exception of Walton who uses a NAQT set (A-set?).

The Walton tournament this year used a standard NAQT IS set (IS-88, I believe), not an A set like last year. The Brookwood questions were quite different this year from previous years -- more pyramidal in style and much more challenging.

As for the rankings, from what I've seen so far this year, although there are some good Georgia teams, I'm not sure that any really belongs in the top 25 teams in the country -- with the possible exception of Alpharetta, which (no offense meant to the rest of the team) is essentially a one-man team. If that one man spends as much time studying for quiz bowl as I think he does, though, they can be pretty formidable at the national level.

Centennial is, as Elliott Rountree noted above, very fast at stuff they know (especially science) but they definitely have some gaps in their knowledge. This "knowledge gap" probably results from the fact that they attend very few tournaments. And their lack of attendance at tournaments, in turn, results from their two best players(Bradley and Adam Silverman) being involved in a myriad of other activities that just don't leave much time for quiz bowl. I know that both Silverman brothers play on the school tennis team, as well as in tennis tournaments; Adam Silverman beat my nephew in a tournament a few months back. Until Centennial's team commits more time to quiz bowl, I don't see them as being a player on the national scene, despite their potential.

Cathy Hirsch
Coach
Central Gwinnett H.S.

Sorry to be picky, but could someone correct the spelling of my team's name on the poll: Kellenberg.

Thank you.

I thought these rankings were fairly accurate. One exception being LASA's 8th place. But, I guess that's my fault for not voting.
Also, I am surprised that Southisde B actually received votes since we haven't really done much.

Any news on when full ballots will be posted?

Joshua Rutsky wrote:In regards to Hoover, we have lost head-to-head twice to Alpharetta, who has a very good team this year, but haven't had the opportunity for a return match since the losses, which were in the first tourney of the year (the William Rufus King @ Univ. of Alabama), and on an NAQT A-set. At that tourney, we beat Dorman B head-to-head and dropped a close match to Dorman A. At CATT V , we lost to Dorman B while playing with only two of our starters, but made it easily to the quarters with just those two. We also dropped a match to Ezell-Harding at Brookwood in the playoffs, where we just weren't fast enough. Still, if you look at our NAQT IS-set record and our play on similar house sets, we perform much better on those, so maybe that counted for something in some people's eyes.

Ok, that makes sense.

William, good luck with the rest of your season. I know that my kids would very much like to get that rematch before the end of the year, but if we don't, we'll see you and the Alpharetta crew at PACE.

I'm definitely looking forward to a rematch (especially on better questions than an A-set). Are you guys considering going to WoQ at Clemson?

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Are you guys considering going to WoQ at Clemson?

I sure hope so. We'd love to see Hoover (and a lot of other teams) at Clemson in March.

We really were considering WOQ, but our state format requires competing in three legs, and our regional tournament is that weekend, so we will have to miss it. Again. Grrr.

Sorry.

Will the Mid-Season rankings of each of the 17 voters who submitted a poll be posted? Obviously there is no "science" to such polls, but my guess is that there is a solid consensus for most of the Top 25 teams , with, of course, some interesting differences of opinion as well. So---any chance the entire 17 set of votes will be posted?

Edward Powers wrote:Will the Mid-Season rankings of each of the 17 voters who submitted a poll be posted? Obviously there is no "science" to such polls, but my guess is that there is a solid consensus for most of the Top 25 teams , with, of course, some interesting differences of opinion as well. So---any chance the entire 17 set of votes will be posted?

This information will be available this week. I'm sorry if the hurriedness and such of the poll as released is seen as sloppy or incomplete, it was merely my intention to get the rankings out before I left for Penn Bowl.

No need to apologize---your efforts are appreciated. Hope you did well at the Penn Bowl!

I'm surprised Horace Greeley didn't get any votes.

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:I'm surprised Horace Greeley didn't get any votes.

Very few teams know who they are. And they're decent, but not incredible. On an NAQT set they averaged under 19ppb this year, which is pretty good. But they never really travel to anything, so i don't see how anyone could consider a team like that in the top 25 in the nation.

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:
I'm surprised Horace Greeley didn't get any votes.
Very few teams know who they are. And they're decent, but not incredible. On an NAQT set they averaged under 19ppb this year, which is pretty good. But they never really travel to anything, so i don't see how anyone could consider a team like that in the top 25 in the nation.

They appear to be at the same level as Bergen and St. Joseph's (NJ) and they both got a couple of votes. It probably has to do with the fact that they are mainly a team still.

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:I'm surprised Horace Greeley didn't get any votes.

*insert 1872 Presidential Election joke here*

On the topic of Horace Greeley---they probably did not get votes because they've only attended two NAQT events this year---at LIFT in October, playing IS-88, and at Half Hollow Hills West, playing Set 91A, so they are not well known. And yes, they do play more Chip tournaments, but this does not detract from their excellence. At LIFT they were comparable to Bergen, Charter, Saint Joes and Hunter, and they played without one of their best players. At HHH West, with all of their best players in attendance, they won it all, averaging over 500+ points/match and over 24 or 25 PPB. On an A Set---yes, its true---but they are good and they are fast. They defeated a talented Kellenberg Team in the Finals, and as Brother Nigel reported, the whole match was a buzzer race---which was won something like 520-250 by Greeley, who powered 9 or 10 of the toss-ups, while Kellenberg powered another 5. We at Saint Joe's have played many of the teams just voted into this Midseason Top 25 throughout this 2009-2010 year and have seen others we have not played. The two teams Greeley most reminds me of are Dunbar A and TJA---both very talented and reasonably balanced teams as far as I could discern. Greeley has 3 excellent to outstanding players and a solid 4th. At HHH West, for example, their individual scores for the day were something like 45+, 45+, 40+ and 20+ for the 4 players. Were they better known, they probably would have broken into the Top 25. But until they play more tournaments outside of Westchester County, they will remain an excellent but largely unknown program on these boards. But if they were to go to either HSNACT or PACE's NSC, I would not underestimate them.

I've excised the CATT discussion to http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=9396 .

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:I'm surprised Horace Greeley didn't get any votes.

The poll, while fun and a good starting point of determining which programs are pretty good, does have flaws. One of these I've noticed is that if you post a lot, you get more votes. If you're a traditional powerhouse, you get more votes.

FredMorlan wrote:The poll, while fun and a good starting point of determining which programs are pretty good, does have flaws. One of these I've noticed is that if you post a lot, you get more votes. If you're a traditional powerhouse, you get more votes.

Are you talking about quizbowl or college football?

Wall of Ham wrote:

FredMorlan wrote:The poll, while fun and a good starting point of determining which programs are pretty good, does have flaws. One of these I've noticed is that if you post a lot, you get more votes. If you're a traditional powerhouse, you get more votes.

Are you talking about quizbowl or college football?

Yes.

I, for one, blame Notre Dame's incessant posting on ncaafootball.com for their perpetual state of being overrated.

FredMorlan wrote: If you're a traditional powerhouse, you get more votes.

Yeah we managed to get votes in last season's midseason poll...somehow. It's really hard to figure out which teams are the best when your comparing teams that haven't played each other. This is probably the most effective method unless something akin to College Football's computers comes to fruition (i.e. something that factors in more than just record and strength of schedule) but I don't know if something like that would be all that effective.