We’re back with the unique exercise where you (if you are a loyal kenpom subscriber) get to contribute to the world’s best human-based preseason poll for men’s college basketball.
Not much has changed from last season’s inaugural version. For those new here: You will be given 50 random-ish matchups. In each matchup, your job is to select the team you think will finish the season with the better kenpom rank. The person with most correct picks1 at the end of the season will receive a trophy, immortalizing themselves as the Champion Ball-Knower of the Year. Others in the top ten will receive personal recognition in this space if they so choose and they’ll get a year added to their kenpom subscription.
To get the selection of matchups created especially for you (not really, it’s random), click here. Almost all of these will be matchups you’ll have to give a little thought to, but no need to rush, you have a whole month to figure them out.
On October 7 at 1 AM MDT, your picks will lock forever. As we did last year, we’ll use the Bradley-Terry algorithm to create a 1-364 ranking based on everybody’s picks, and reveal those shortly after the voting closes. Last year’s rankings did reasonably well. (You can see last season’s results here.) My computer claimed victory over the humans, but with player movement at an all-time high this offseason, the humans’ contribution may be more important than ever.
Regardless, you will be participating in the most useful of all human preseason polls. In a few weeks, the AP poll will stubbornly refuse to rank 339 of this season’s 364 teams and unlike the H.U.M.A.N. poll, its voters will not be rewarded for accuracy. And by allowing voters to pick matchups and not assign a specific ranking to each team, the H.U.M.A.N. poll liberates us all from the anchoring effects which poison a method using an ordered ballot.
You are free to go with your heart and not what you think the world wants you to do. Share your ballot publicly, or not. You can reveal it before voting closes. You can keep it secret forever. It doesn’t really matter. That’s the beauty of the H.U.M.A.N. poll.
Participants will include common fans, media luminaries and basketball legends. But everyone’s vote counts the same. (At least for one more year. Next year, we may establish some sort of credibility weighting based on a person’s prior performance.) Last year, Sports Illustrated’s Kevin Sweeney scored the title with 41 correct picks.
It’s a good time to point out that my only way of contacting you is through the email registered to your account. If your email does not do well accepting messages from random strangers or if it’s completely made up, well, you need to resolve that somehow if you want to receive an award. If you need to change your email, you can do so through the change password link at kenpom.com once you have logged in.
Thanks for your interest in the H.U.M.A.N. poll. I look forward to seeing what humanity produces this season.
If there is a tie for most correct picks, the winner will be the entry with the most difficult ballot, as measured by the smallest combined rank difference of all matchups based on the end-of-season kenpom rankings.