Almost half of those surveyed (49.4%, to be exact) said yes, they believe they have at least one gay teammate. In the Pac-10, 70% of those surveyed said yes.

And this is football. Imagine volleyball.

[via Queerty]

This, more than anything, will reinforce Ball State’s image as a second class institution that you only go to until you can get someplace better.

The administration has been trying to change this image forever. That has been one of Ball State President Jo Ann Gora’s goals that she’s been working on for five years. And she just flushed it down the toilet.

I don’t think she realizes how big of a mistake this was. For someone who has major concerns about how the University is viewed, she sure doesn’t seem to understand subtext at all.

–

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS AN ANGRY RANT

The football banquet was a 2 p.m. today, and Hoke said nothing about leaving, according to sources there.

However, the ESPN ticker has been reporting for over an hour that Hoke is talking with San Diego State to become their next head football coach. This has got to be interperted as a slap in the face to Ball State President Jo Ann Gora and her husband, Roy Budd. This is the same university president who sends messages from her Blackberry while the fight song plays at basketball games and disappeared during half time of the last game while the football team was honored.

This is a joke.

Ball State needs an overhaul. If this is the catalyst for that, so be it. It is time for JoGo to GTFO. And take Tom Collins with her.

For those of you who don’t remember, last week I wrote this blog post about Chris Fowler leaving the (then) 11-0 Ball State Cardinals off of his AP Poll top 25 ballot. I, of course, was not the only person to attack Fowler.

Jason Whitlock

Thankfully, someone with a bit more pull that myself, FoxSports.com’s Jason Whitlock, a BSU alum wrote this column that discussed, among other things, how ESPN is ruining sports and how Chris Fowler is an idiot.

What Fowler has done is ridiculous and reeks of the kind of simple-minded arrogance that permeates ESPN. Fowler has had his ass kissed for too many years. He travels around the country during football season and everywhere he goes, there’s an Army of BCS sports information directors waiting to kiss his ass and tell him how great “GameDay” is.

Whitlock also appeared on several talk shows in the days following Ball State’s win, including the Jim Rome show, to talk about his column and how much of an idiot egotist Chris Fowler is.

So, what does Fowler have to say this week, after the Cardinals defeated bowl-bound Western Michigan 45-22? Well, first off his new AP Ballot has us listed at No. 19.  He also talked briefly of College Football Gameday about how great the Cardinals were, and how he’d like to see a BSU/BSU bowl game (more on that tomorrow). Video after the jump. Sure, No. 19 is not exactly great, but better than his ABC/ESPN cohort Craig James who has us at No. 24 or Glenn Guilbeau of the Gannett Louisiana News Service, who has us No. 25. I’m not going to talk about how awful it is to have Oregon State ranked ahead of us, I’ll just let that sit.

Kirk Herbstreit (Chris Fowler's voting buddy)

But the most confusing move of the week belongs Kirk Herbstreit. After having the Cardinals ranked No. 15 two weeks ago, Herbstreit moved Ball State down to No. 16 after beating two time defending Mid-American Conference champion Central Michigan and then lowered us to No. 19 in this week’s ballot. That’s right, after beating the second best team in the MAC by 23 points Herbstreit lowered Ball State in his rankings three positions, despite a plethra of upsets near the Cardinals in the rankings.

How putrid is that? He was one of two voters, the other being Jeff White of the Richmond Times who lowered us from No. 15 to No. 16, to lower us in his ranking in a week where, of the 65 voters, only 14 didn’t move Ball State up at least a spot.

And yet, it doesn’t exactly surprize me.

Herbstreit, while voting for WBNS in Columbus, Ohio, is also a member of the College Gameday crew. Maybe Chris Fowler was afraid that No. 19 would be too low and wanted a little support, so he asked his friend Kirk to help him out? Doesn’t it seem odd that both voting members of the College Gameday team would have Ball State ranked exactly the same? More so when you consider that one had them No. 16 and the other didn’t have them ranked the previous week? Isn’t this exactly what Jason Whitlock’s column was talking about?

For now, let’s just enjoy this video of Chris Fowler, who did not have Ball State on his ballot while saying this, hypeing up the Ball State Cardinals.

video from FNL4.com

Chris Fowler

But at least one AP voter is not going to make it easy for the Cardinals: Chris Fowler. For those of you who don’t know Fowler is the member of the ESPN/ABC booth who looks like Walter Peck from Ghostbusters. That or some kind of Muppet, I’m not sure.

Ball State, currently 15th in the AP poll, is missing the ten points that would come if Fowler, along with a few others would have Ball State reasonably ranked.

To prove how awful, statistically, Fowler is from the rest of the nation I put my AP Stats class to good use.

Of the 65 voters who placed a vote in the AP poll, 26 ranked Ball State No. 14, making it the mode. It is also the median because of the 13 voters who ranked Ball State 11th, 12th and 13th. The mean of the voters other than Fowler is 14.5. That means the Fowler is over ten points off, which is over four standard deviations away from the mean. If we eliminate the outliers who voted Ball State 24 and 25 the standard deviation shrinks, of course, and the math becomes more outlandish.

Walter Peck

More awful than that is Fowler’s list. He has a TCU team that barely beat an Air Force team that lost to Navy (a team Ball State defeated) as No. 12. Other teams on Fowler’s list, from No. 15 on: Oregon St. (8-3), Cincinnati (9-2), Mississippi (7-4), Oregon (8-3), Boston College (8-3), Georgia Tech (8-3), West Virginia (7-3), Florida St. (8-3), Michigan St. (9-3), Northwestern (9-3), BYU (10-2).

I could look at each one on this list and pick out problems. With the exception of a 7-4 SEC team and BYU, all these teams are from the Big East, the Pac 10, the ACC or the Big 10.

What do these conferences have in common? They all stink. Sure, they may not be as bad as the MAC (which is better than it gets credit for) but is going 9-3 against a conference that has Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan really that impressive? How about the PAC10, which has not only the worst (Washington), but also the second worst (Washington State) team in the country? How is Oregon’s best win against a 6-5 Arizona that much better than Ball State’s win over 6-4 Navy or 8-3 Central Michigan? The Big East beats up on Syracuse, Louisville and South Florida. The ACC doesn’t have one team with more than eight wins. The MAC has two.

Guy Smiley

While Ball State may not be the No. 14 team in the country, no one has been able to beat them. Central Michigan, a two time defending MAC Champion, was the only team to make it into a game in the fourth quarter, and they were at home.

It’s fine that Chris Fowler thinks Ball State is a joke. I think he’s a joke. But at this point it is hurting the Cards ranking. Fowler, along with his ESPN partner Craig James and Glenn Guilbeau from the Gannett Louisiana News Service are the three who have Ball State outside the top twenty. If they all had Ball State at 16, which would be statistically reasonable, then Ball State would be the No. 14 team in the country.

The AP has made the voting records public, so you can see how your favorite voters placed Ball State here.

• For the graphics kids that read (and write) this blog, The BBC has an interesting little slideshow on how the fonts on movie posters are selected. It’s a nice short little read that highlights some big name posters.
• A couple of notes from ESPN: First, Ball State made Pat Forde’s blog, one of the most read on the site (though he says our record is 5-0, when we are 6-0, baby!) and LSU’s linemen are going to try and take out the other teams QB. Classy.
• Finally, Variety has a review of W. that is interesting without giving too much away.