Michigan is a bunch of cheaters and I can prove it!

Ok maybe not prove it but I noticed something suspicious on the EA's "NCAA Football Traditions" voting.

The place to vote is on ESPN at the following link: http://sports.espn.go.com/sportsnation/story?page=ncaatraditionsvote

In a shocker, #15 Nebraska's Horseshoe beat #2 Script Ohio 53 - 47% with 71k votes cast.  #6 Colorado Ralphie lost to #11 Michigan Banner by a 38 - 62% Margin with 78k votes cast.

If you look at the details for the Ohio State-Nebraska matchup you see that Ohio State won 30 of the 50 states with 2 ties.  The votes are all pretty consistently in Ohio State's favor except for the international vote which cast 52k votes at a 82% margin for Nebraska which is what won the poll (Note - this poll by state adds up to much more than 71k).

If you look at the details for the Colorado-Michigan matchup you see that Colorado won 41 of the 50 states with a pretty consistent winning margin in the 55-65%.  There are only 10k international votes and they have Colorado winning as well.  If you look at the number of votes by state there's no way it adds up to the 78k listed by ESPN.  Somehow this all added up to a convincing Michigan win.

I looked at all the other matchups and here is the number of votes cast:

54k - Notre Dame - WVU
44k - Georgia - Tennessee
41k - Florida St - Florida
45k - Clemson - USC
52k - Auburn - LSU
39k - Texas - Oklahoma

That's an average of about 45k votes for these 6 matchups while Ohio State had 71k and Michigan had 78k.  No doubt there are a lot of people that follow each of these schools but it certainly seems likely that someone is hacking the system in the OSU and Michigan contests by about 20k votes.

If you look at the voting maps on the other contests you also see a consistent pattern where the state results are reasonably similar to the national results.  The only matchup that looks out of line is the OSU-Nebraska and Colorado-Michigan.  If you back out 20k votes for Nebraska and Michigan suddenly things look closer to what you'd expect from the maps.

The big question is who is sneaky enough to do such a thing?  I think we all know the answer to that question ... scUM.