Personally, I detest polls and selection committees.
College Football gives us all we need, to respect its champion. Do a little more realignment and College Football can convene - The Tournament of Champions. Its pagentry and appeal will be unmatched. It should be Olympian in spirit and spectacle. Perhaps this sentiment could refine and preserve, amateur athletics.
I say, get rid of the polls. The press can still have its opinion. But, that opinion has no bearing on the gridiron.
What do you think?
Honestly, in a perfect world where you don't have to worry about any current conference ties or already agreed upon TV contracts, I think college football should take up the idea seen on the other side of the pond, with the other sport of "football."
The promotion/relegation theme, or something of the sort, like we see in the European soccer leagues seems like a perfect fit for college football. Could you imagine "conferences" all being tied to one another, leading up to a regional winner who moves on to face other regional winners in a 4 or 8 team playoff?
For example, you match a higher-tiered conference (Big Ten) with a lower-tiered conference (MAC) to form the Great Lakes Region. The top 2 or 3 from the MAC in 2012 switch "conferences" or schedules with the bottom 2 or 3 of the Big Ten for the 2013 season. You do this all across the country, and the Region winners then meet for a playoff, much like we are seeing now.
It'll never, ever happen, but one can imagine.
"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
How else do you propose we judge success? Sure the polls are inaccurate a lot of the time, however, they do provide a viable option to measure the quality of a team.
If conducted properly, the polls can be a viable method of measuring quality of teams. The way it has been done recently with the ESPN/Coaches Poll probably should not be included in the list of "viable" polls.
This new selection committee will essentially be a new poll to select the top 4 teams. Hopefully the makeup of the committee is such that we can all be confident the proper teams will be selected, and fairness/objectivity is used in the process.
"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
The polls are not going to go anywhere even if they are superfluous in the new system. People as a whole like the structure that a poll provides. It allows them to get a grasp on how good a team is in comparison to another even if they completely disagree. It also is a huge ratings booster. While Alabama vs Ohio State will always generate excitement, number 1 Alabama vs number 2 Ohio State (for example) will pull many more viewers in. Polls are a flawed system but at this point they still carry with them tangible benefits to the powers that be so they are here to stay.
Our honor defend we will fight to the end for Ohio..
@FROMTHE18
I totally agree with you. Its fun and does give us a ballpark calculation of the quality of a team.
We just give snow cones to everyone for "trying"....*rolls eyes*
@oldcolumbustown
I would love to setup a relagation/promotion system in college football. It would make recruiting a tad more even I would think if the top mac schools got a chance to play a B1G schedule year in and year out. Not to mention schools out west, like WAC or mountain west schools could do a west region with the PACwhatever and SWAC and other conferences with the SEC. would make for a very exciting end of the season regardless of bowls/playoffs, as well as motivation for lesser powerful schools to get in some action. Im a big fan and that may be my favorite idea ive heard yet
The problem with polls is that there is a pre season poll that comes out before any games are played. There is always some team in the top 10 that at the end of the season we look back and say why were they ranked at all. The problem with that is perception. When alabama comes off a NChampionship they will be ranked high probably #1, after a dissapointing season OSU could be ranked 10-20. The perception though is that if alabama looses a game they are still not going to fall out of the top 10. and would still be ahead of an undefeated OSU.
Ohio state is big enough that if they win out they are in the playoffs. However, A team like OK ST and Other non-perenial powers, has trouble moving up polls even ahead of 2 loss SEC team because they started a meaningless preason poll higher ranked, when those rankings are not based on the current team at all.
What happens if say Hypothetically, OSU is undefeated, USC, OK st and (someone from the Big East/acc Lets just say) Louisville have 1 loss and Alabama has 2 losses. I can guarentee that in the polls a 2 loss alabama will still be ahead of a 1 loss Louisville, and probably ahead of a OK st as well. In My mind OSU, USC, OK ST, And Louisville, should be in the Playoff. Right, Thats the point is to let the "Little Guy" (AKA non perenial power) a chance to prove on the field that they are the best in the country.
I also, guarentee that Alabama would not be left out of that playoff. Because of perception and polls. I know that is why there is selection committe instead of computer polls but this is still going to be a problem. At least now we can blame a group of people rather than a computer set up in some guys basement.
Any rating system is flawed, there's no perfect way of comparing teams that play completely different competition. Human polls are flawed because they are particularly prone to human bias (Nick Saban ranking OKState 4th last year, or something like that). They are largely dependent on recent history (SEC domination) and popular opinion (nobody from the Big East is worth a mention). Formula driven computer rankings are prone to the same problem; they are formulas created by people. Those people weight things differently. Until someone finds the CFB e=mc^2 formula that is 100% accurate, this will always be a problem. We'll always have polls, as flawed as they are. The best example of this is the AP Poll. It still exists even though it's been removed from the BCS formula for, what 4-5 years? Maybe more/less, I can't remember. Yet we'll still hear garbage about "split national champions" if they AP poll has a different #1 than the outcome of the championship game. The media pimps it because it's their poll, even if it matters exactly as much as the Jow Schmo's Backyard Rankings. People who have power within CFB are the folks who vote in or create all of these polls/models (Sagarin, AP, former coaches, current coaches), and they like voting. So we'll always have polls because the power brokers are also the voters who would have to decide to do away with them. Conflict of interest? You bet. Getting them to change a system flawed by human bias and input? Well, maybe by the end of this next 12 year contract they'll consider it. But that's a long time to hold your breath, so I wouldn't do it.
When told OSU set school record for 50+ games this year, UFM said "That's good. We're gonna break that next year."