The Fallacy of Pre-season Rankings and Coaches Poll - gameface1324's Blog

gameface1324's Blog

The Fallacy of Pre-season Rankings and Coaches Poll

Posted on October 5, 2009 at 12:37 PM.

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One of the most obvious flaws in the current BCS ranking system is it's inclusion of the Coach's Poll and not the AP poll. While not the only one, it is the worst. The fact that there are preseason rankings in itself is a major flaw, which only adds to the Coach's poll flaw.

The Coaches poll gets the least legwork of the 2 major polls. Coaches are WAY too busy each week to give it the attention it deserves, and I say deserves because lets face it, the poll is 1/3 of the BCS calculation. Thats pretty damn important. WHn you have grad assistants filling out your ballots, that is sad. When you refuse to show who you ranked where, that is even more sad. A few coaches have made the jump to show their ballots, and even challenged other coaches to do the same. I think if they did, many of us would be shocked and outraged at the obvious bias and lack of attention given to these votes.

Coaches will vote on teams they are playing, in their conference, etc to help themselves out. They also vote on these teams because it is these teams the coaches have done research on, scouted, and care about. I can assure you, Bobby Bowden could care less about how good Oregon might be, unless they played them.

Another major flaw in this poll is that it comes out in the preseason. People will say that Pre-season polls dont count, its the games that are played that count. Sure, that is true to an extent, but try telling a team not ranked near the top 25 that they can get enough ranking jumps to be #1 at the end of the year. It is near Impossible. The polls come out based on a few preseason magazines and where they rank them, so that in itself is ********ly absurd. Why not name it the Athalon poll?

Each week when a team beats another team, the merit of their ranking is based on that beaten teams ranking that week, which again goes back to where they were in the preseason, etc, and it snowballs like that all season. The polls are more of a ladder system, where you jump other teams based on who lost in front of you and how many you can climb based on who you beat. Its so faulty that way. Teams should be ranked based on how good they are at that time, and the results of games played. Erase the rankings each week and start fresh after the new results.

If you are gonna include the Coaches poll, you should include the AP poll as well, because I promise the AP writers do this for a living and they know more about teams across the country than the coaches' grad assistants do. Or I would even settle for a composite of the 2 polls.

The first polls should not come out till at the earliest after week 3, preferably around week 4 or 5. By then, the dust has settled and there are no lofty rankings based on the mags (Ole Miss anyone?)

To show some examples, lets use the Week 4 poll.

LSU ranked #4 because of the preseason rankings... after almost losing to unranked Washington and unranked Miss St. Both games they should have lost, but barely squeaked out a win due to luck and.or some bad calls.

But an even bigger issue... #4 (previous week) loses to an Oregon team that had wins over 2 ranked teams, and only loss was to a ranked Boise team (also top 5) and Cal drops all the way down to #23. USC loses to Washington, a much worse team than Oregon, and they are back into the top 12. Where is the consistency here? Sure, by week 5 USC had beaten Cal, but that has nothing to do with the point of how skewed these polls were in Week 4.

You can even glance at this weeks poll to see these same inconsistencies. South Carolina is 4-1, having barely lost (and whould have won) to Georgia, who was ranked in top 15 most of season, yet beat Ole Miss when they were #5. Ole Miss lost to SC, is only 3-1, and hasn't beaten anyone remotely good, and is ranked higher than SC (#20 to #25)

USC and OSU are sure as hell back in the top 10 tho. USC even ranked higher than many unbeaten teams that are good, including Cinn and Iowa. Cant keep the big money schools out of there, or the NCAA might lose money. USC, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Alabama, LSU, etc... I promise will always get the benefit of the doubt after losses, always have the major heisman candidates, etc because of who they are, not because of what they have done.

Please NCAA, if you are going to insist on keeping around some of the worst travesties in football (ND being allowed to not be part of a conf, yet still get bowl tie ins) including the much hated BCS system and lack of playoffs, then at least do something about the wackiness of these polls, if they are going to be such a huge element in deciding our National Champion.

Comments

# 1 splff3000 @ Oct 5

It's all about dinero man. Which schools bring in the most money for the NCAA? The same ones you listed. The whole BCS is based on money. Take a step back and look at the conferences that get automatic bids to BCS games. Tell me Boise St couldn't beat anybody from the Big East or anybody from the ACC this year, excluding Miami and VA Tech. It's all about money. Nice blog man.