Around the May Poll…
I love the absurd. Absurd things like preseason college football polls.
How exactly does the preseason college football poll work? That’s a good question.
From the days of Aristotle and Plato, to heavy thinkers like Galileo Galilei and Tycho Brahe, to modern geniuses like Einstein, mankind has always tried to conquer the unnerving and unfathomable void that is the college football preseason poll. Somewhere in his den Stephen Hawking is developing a theory about the poll, a theory which explains why teams at the top of the poll, much like light entering a black hole, never seem to escape. Right now Russell Crowe is furrowing his Nashian brow trying to determine why USC is number one and not Georgia. Or LSU. Or Miami. Or Oklahoma. Or Oklahoma State. Actually, he’s on pretty solid ground dismissing the Cowboys but for the rest of them, he’d deserve that 13 and one half inch tall gold trophy if he could conjure a plausible explanation or formula.
I have to wonder how anyone measures the accuracy of the preseason poll. I’ll accept midseason polling; in fact, I’ll endorse any poll taken after week 2, after which every team has played at least once, any stadium against any opponent. This method, naturally, excludes Kansas State and whatever cupcake the Wildcats have scheduled for their first home game.
But the preseason poll nonsense? Honestly, how do you rate the University of Miami, which sends so many players into the first round of the draft every spring that the school must be running a roster of 137 athletes just to maintain a healthy starting lineup of 22 guys. How do you rate the other Miami, the Ohioan variety, which sent their quarterback into the NFL draft’s first round as well? How do you rate a team on the periphery of the top 25 when their best player departs?
How do USC, Oklahoma and LSU all garner at least one number one vote in the poll, a poll that precedes the games?
It’s a well-known fact that some voters select the previous season’s #1 as the new season’s #1, if only because they believe a team stays on top unless they show cause to be removed. Of course, that does seem to violate the idea that a pollster should be voting for the teams as they think they are, not how they were, but that’s what some folks do. Following that logic you could vote the team from two seasons ago number one as well. After all, if you’re basing your vote or teams and players that aren’t even around, why bother?
Some folks cast their votes politically. Barry Switzer once cast his vote for unbeaten but inferior Fresno State in what could have been a political move, a protest move or plain folly. Other voters tally along conference allegiance, selecting their brethren if they can’t opt for their alma mater. Still other votes are seemingly based on potential, voting for how good you think a team will be in December, not today. Neither one of these methods seems particularly impressive either.
The bitter truth on this is voting by humans will always be biased. The way pollsters think 10-0 Hawaii will be ranked 20th while 8-2 Notre Dame will sit at 10th. Take the same stats and scores and switch the team names and Notre Dame will still end up ranked higher. The voters always take traditional powers over newcomers, famed conferences over upstarts. And that’s part of the problem of the preseason poll. It’s weighted too heavily on the high initial ranking. It’s nearly a mathematical possibility to end the season #1 if you didn’t start in the top 25.
And that’s absurd.
Abolish the poll before the second or third game.
