Preseason polls, one of the absolute worst things to ever happen to college football. These polls inherently reduce the validity of the regular season since they're based solely on what happened last season. It's a crime.
The problem is how do you get rid of preseason polls?
If USA Today decided they were going to do away with their preaseason rankings, some other media outlet would attempt to fill that void. Try as they might, the coach's and all the other voters would quite obviously pay attention to what everyone else thought in terms of rankings. Their assessment of team strength would naturally be influenced by these other polls.
The clear evidence of this phenomenon is that the polls delaying the release of their results currently, mirror almost exactly the assessments of all the other media rankings. In other words, it really doesn't matter if you rank teams before the season starts, or in the middle of the season, the rankings will wind up almost the same.
That's just a loose theory. And if it's true, are preseason polls really as bad as I think?
Maybe, maybe not. The inherent bias of college football fans makes it both the most frustrating and the most spectacular sport in this great nation.
To settle this problem? For the first time ever, I'm leaning toward a plus-one. Never thought I'd say that, but four teams duking it out is starting to make a lot of sense.
Much more on this subject in the future...
No comments:
Post a Comment