[stupac2]

2)  Regional voting heavily impacts winners.  There are 6 announced regions in Voldemort voting and the SEC has a member school in 4 of them.  The Pac 12 is only in the Pacific region with the exception of Colorado.  Luck and Gerhart only carried the Pacific and the SEC which has strong representation in 4 regions with the addition of Texas A&M has a of exceedingly large proportions advantage.  Cam Newton, Mark Ingram and even RGB carried 4+ regions. 

The West is often an outlier.  For instance, in 2009 Voldemort winner Ingram carried 5 of the 6 regions but wasn't even 2nd in the West. (Gerhart got 319 votes, followed by Colt McCoy at 214 and Ingram at 153.)

This is true, but last year Mariota actually did quite well in the South region, although that was the only region that voted Cooper #2 over Gordon. It's also important that the of the 3 major vote-getters, two are in adjacent regions, which wasn't true with Toby (who had competition in pretty much every region, the top candidates were him, Ingram, McCoy, Suh, and Tebow, which is pretty geographically diverse). Similarly, when Luck lost to RG3 the voters in other regions added players like Richardson and Montee Ball, and like with Toby there were 5 invitees that year so it was likely spread more evenly around those candidates. Newton just creamed Luck all over and, honestly, I get why he won it that year, that vote doesn't bother me.

So I think there only being 3 candidates with two of them being very close together bodes well for McCaffrey. If he can dominate the West, Southwest, and Midwest relative to Henry and Watson (which seems quite possible), then he should do well enough in the other regions to make up for it.

We'll see, obviously. But I am cautiously optimistic.

[stupac2]

2)  Regional voting heavily impacts winners.  There are 6 announced regions in Voldemort voting and the SEC has a member school in 4 of them.  The Pac 12 is only in the Pacific region with the exception of Colorado.  Luck and Gerhart only carried the Pacific and the SEC which has strong representation in 4 regions with the addition of Texas A&M has a of exceedingly large proportions advantage.  Cam Newton, Mark Ingram and even RGB carried 4+ regions. 

The West is often an outlier.  For instance, in 2009 Voldemort winner Ingram carried 5 of the 6 regions but wasn't even 2nd in the West. (Gerhart got 319 votes, followed by Colt McCoy at 214 and Ingram at 153.)

This is true, but last year Mariota actually did quite well in the South region, although that was the only region that voted Cooper #2 over Gordon. It's also important that the of the 3 major vote-getters, two are in adjacent regions, which wasn't true with Toby (who had competition in pretty much every region, the top candidates were him, Ingram, McCoy, Suh, and Tebow, which is pretty geographically diverse). Similarly, when Luck lost to RG3 the voters in other regions added players like Richardson and Montee Ball, and like with Toby there were 5 invitees that year so it was likely spread more evenly around those candidates. Newton just creamed Luck all over and, honestly, I get why he won it that year, that vote doesn't bother me.

So I think there only being 3 candidates with two of them being very close together bodes well for McCaffrey. If he can dominate the West, Southwest, and Midwest relative to Henry and Watson (which seems quite possible), then he should do well enough in the other regions to make up for it.

We'll see, obviously. But I am cautiously optimistic.