August 24, 2011
On Rankings
Every year, I struggle with the continuing irony that teams many, many media people think can finish with no more than 8 wins is ranked by the media. While the polls are a necessary evil of college football, I tend to agree with Blutarsky (my most sincere apologies) that doing any type of national poll before October 1 is folly.
So, if Georgia is that team this year, are there reasons that you see for the media and coaches to rank Georgia in the top 20? I mean, I think we could finish with 10-11 wins. I also think we could finish with 6-7. I guess that is why I think pre-season polls are so difficult to deal with, especially the coaches' poll. That one has a bearing on who ends up in the BCS games.
Any team in the preseason top 15 or so that wins all but one game has a much better shot at a BCS game than any other team that does so.
I guess I started writing this post as a question about Georgia's ranking, so I apologize for the little rant. I know we are the sixth or seventh ranked SEC team, but is the SEC so much better that an 8-4 SEC East team should be ranked with virtually all other 9 win teams at the end of the season? Are there reasons Georgia got the ranking love?
2 comments:
Polls were invented to sell newspapers and to promote college football. I'm not sure that role has ever changed...thus, you get a poll where Fowler votes UGA 15th and UGA happens to be playing on ESPN and it makes you wonder...not saying he is doing that, but am saying there is an inherent conflict of interests there...and that was the whole point when the polls were created.
Why do you think the other polls died? The AP and the UPI and USA Today etc. etc. controlled the coverage. They had a reason to minimize any other system/poll that compromised their monopoly. Just look at their reaction to any sort of computer poll...
So, to answer your question, Polls during the season don't matter. They are pure marketing for the sport so that Fan A and Casual Observer B can tune in to that week's "big games."
The only poll that matters is the last one because that is the only one that affects the rankings.
If polls are about who is the better football team, then yes 8-4 and even 7-5 SEC teams deserved to be ranked ahead of even 10-2 or 11-1 teams from some of the weaker conferences.
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