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Gripe About The Polling System

0 HS
Hayze's picture
October 24, 2014 at 4:16pm
19 Comments

Let me first just get out of the way that I know it will never go away. Without ranked teams it makes it difficult for the networks to hype up games and therefore they will not make as much $$.

However, if I've come to the realization that polling (especially pre-season polls) hurts the sport more than helps the sport. It creates a bias that the pollsters have to go by when voting the next week. A ranked team loses and they have to be dropped. A ranked team beats another ranked team and they have to be moved up.

The best example I can give this year is Texas A&M. They shot up 12 spots for beating a bad South Carolina team. Because of that, every other team who beat them (Miss St, Ole Miss and Bama) got credit for beating a ranked (top 10) team. Had there been no polls, we wouldn't have assumed South Carolina was good pre-season and therefore wouldn't assumed that A&M was elite after smashing USC.

Some make the argument that polls are good because it helps the viewer know who is good or not. In a way I see their point, but even if there weren't rankings, teams records combined with their history would do more than enough. We know that Alabama, Auburn, Ohio State, Oklahoma, etc are good year in year out. We don't need a ranking to tell us that. And if Baylor has had 3 straight 10 win seasons, we know they should be pretty good too.

I think it would be much more beneficial to rank teams at the end of the season. You've seen all the games and you can make an informed decision about who the best teams are without bias about keeping a team high or low because they started out there. Which is why I was (and still am) a huge fan of the playoff. It allows the group to make an informed decision about who should play after the games have been played. However, I'm not an thrilled about them releasing their own poll. It will create bias that they have to go by. If the teams they rank in the top 4 all don't lose again for the remainder of the season then it'll be hard to put another team in that top 4, even if they deserve it when the season ends.

Anyways, enough of my rambling. What do you guys think? Am I wrong?

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