College Football Rankings: What's The Point?

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Why do we put out a new college football poll every week? What's the purpose?

Better yet, what do the rankings actually measure? Is each weekly poll a simple snapshot of the best teams in the country? Or is it more of a look at who's got the inside track — at that particular point in the season — to advance to the national championship game?

After Alabama's not-so-surprising loss at South Carolina Saturday, it made sense that Ohio State replaced the Tide at No. 1 in both major polls. But are the Buckeyes really better than everyone else in the country? I don't think so.

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And does Alabama's new No. 8 ranking in each poll mean there are seven teams that could beat the Tide?

That's actually another question I have: If a team is ranked ahead of you, does that mean it would beat you head-to-head, in the eyes of the voters? I think that's partly what the poll should mean, but I'd bet that's not how writers or coaches look at it. We've heard stories about lower-level assistants filling out a coach's ballot, so surely there are plenty more cases of similar carelessness that we don't know about.

It seems that year after year, there's increasingly more gray area in college football voting than in my teeth after two glasses of Merlot. If a team's complete body of work was a heavier factor, then maybe Ohio State's ranking is closer to 3 or 4. Instead, OSU has parlayed a preseason No. 2 ranking and a soft first half into a new seat on top of the sport.

Oregon has been an interesting team this year; the Ducks were perched around No. 10 or 12 in most preseason polls, but their overall resume is better than Ohio State's, and they've got style points aplenty, for whatever that fact is worth. And, as I correctly predicted they'd do a few weeks ago, they've found their way to No. 2 by midseason.

I know plenty of writers say they don't like preseason polls, that they're essentially marketing tools to get folks talking endlessly debating over where their favorite team is ranked. Regardless of whether you believe that, a team's August ranking is becoming more and more critical because of the methodology used by many of the voters once the season begins. They usually refer back to the previous week's poll, start at the top, drop each losing team by four or five or six spots, then move up everyone else below. Of course more thought goes into how bad a loss was, whether a loss was to another ranked team, how impressive a win was, how unimpressive a win may have been, etc.

These national writers, who by week six have a good idea of who's contending and who's pretending, should — if they truly cared enough — consider not looking at any previous polls and just starting entirely from scratch. I think blowing up last week's rankings and trusting what you've seen through the season's first half should be enough for a knowledgeable scribe to put together a Top 25 list, volatile fluctuations and all.

And keep in mind; I'm just talking about the AP poll here. The coaches' rankings are even more ridiculous because there aren't a whole lot of those guys sitting in front of televisions on Saturdays. They have their own games to spend all week obsessing over before spending all Saturday coaching from the sidelines. And last I checked, there are no flat-screens between the hedges.

Whatever your take is, I think we can all agree the BCS system isn't the only significant flaw in college football. The voting for 15 weeks that precipitates the mess that is the BCS seems equally ineffective.