When the Atlantic Coast Conference released its preseason football poll in July, N.C. State fans saw the Wolfpack picked last in its division.

In almost every preseason poll the ACC released for fall sports, Pack fans saw NCSU picked to finish last again and again.

But in an effort both to confound analysts’ low expectations and to get a laugh from around the nation, Pack fans on The Wolf Web, the unofficial message board of the University, post links to online polls on various Web sites, including ESPN.com and “skew” the results.

Mike Hershkowitz, a senior in nuclear engineering, said in an ideal situation, skewing the polls would give people respect for NCSU and its fan base.

“But it probably just makes them scratch their heads,” he said. “But it’s a little bit about being a smarter fan base. We’re organized and intelligent enough to do this. I’ve never really seen others do it. N.C. State fans definitely have a lot of passion.”

When TWW gets organized to skew a poll, it’s more than going to a Web site and voting over and over again. Some fans write programs and scripts that run on their computers and automatically vote for State in a continuous loop.

Ken Warner, a 2004 graduate in computer science, said he writes simple code that votes for State in the polls as many times as he tells the program to vote.

He said the code isn’t very complicated — only 15 lines — but the code writer would have to understand “what’s happening on the underside of a Web site.”

“I’ll look at the poll one time and see what information it’s sending, and my code will resend that information,” Warner said.

To make the code work, Warner has an extension for the Firefox Web browser called “Live HTTP Headers.” The extension tells Warner what information travels back and forth between the Web browser and the Web site.

“When you go to ESPN.com and vote in a poll, your browser sends information to them, and I look at that information,” Warner said.

Then, Warner uses “cURL,” which he said is a library for providing URL capabilities. It automates the sequence of actions based on what Warner tells it to do.

“I tell cURL what I want to send back to the Web site, and it does all the work for me,” he said.

Warner said the code is just a regular text file — php. He puts the php file on a server, and the server will run the file.

“Just anybody probably couldn’t do it,” Warner said. “You have to have a pretty decent understanding of how the Internet works, and you need to understand http protocol. It’s not hard, but not many people are interested enough to try to learn it.”

Hershkowitz said he thinks quite highly of Warner.

“He’s definitely the man,” he said. “I’ve never written any code, but I’ll take part and vote as many times as I can. It’s great to vote, and then check back later and see what [Warner’s] code has done.”

John Clark, general manager of WRAL.com, said poll skewing is always a possibility when a poll is posted on a Web site.

“We put a disclaimer on all our polls that say explicitly it isn’t scientific,” Clark said. “It’s for entertainment only. We don’t guarantee accuracy, and it’s certainly not scientific.”

Clark said there are rudimentary things that can be done to protect against poll skewing. One such process is cookie tracking, where cookies are set to guard against repeat voters. Another method is IP tracking. The poll checks to see the IP address of the voter, and if that IP address has already voted, the poll will not allow a repeat vote.

“There are various things we can do, but it’s not a whole lot,” Clark said. “And it’s extremely easy to get around.”

Clark said he’d prefer if polls weren’t skewed, but he said he knows it happens, and it isn’t a huge problem.

“It’s not a big ethical problem or anything like that, but I’d obviously prefer not to have to worry about it,” he said. “But it’s a bunch of people having fun with a poll and visiting the site.”

Warner said he helps skew polls because he likes to get attention for the University and its athletics program.

“I like to get people talking about N.C. State,” he said. “I never try and skew a poll so that it’s completely unreasonable. I try to make the results realistic. Some say when you skew a poll, you’re making a mockery, but it’s just for fun.”

“It absolutely shows how technology and the Internet affect everything. Anyone can make a huge difference, and there’s real power there.”

Bradley Pierson, a redshirt junior punter on the football team, said it’s great to have fans backing up the team.

“Our fans are backing us up and staying with us through the thick and the thin,” he said.

John Dunlap, a senior wide receiver on the football team, echoed Pierson’s sentiments and said NCSU fans are “great.”

“We have some of the best fans in the country,” he said.

Hershkowitz said the results of the poll are often “really ironic.”

“The last poll that was skewed asked who was going to win the ACC,” he said. “At one point, we were in the lead, and I think we ended up finishing second. That’s clearly not going to happen though. It’s just a good way to get our name out there.”

He added that it’s “all in good fun,” but it also is a “little unfair.”

“Technology makes it easier for fans to come together,” Hershkowitz said. “Lots of schools have online message boards; ours just happens to be more popular. I cheer [Warner] on. I feel bad for the people who are running the polls.

“They’re not getting real statistics. I definitely feel for Web people who are trying to have an honest poll, and then we end up winning by 95,000 votes.”

Warner was careful to note that what he does “is in no way hacking.”

“I’m not accessing anything hidden,” he said. “It may be a way of doing things ESPN didn’t intend, but it’s not bad or malicious in any way.”

A phone message left last week for ESPN.com Media Relations was not immediately returned.