Bad sports, good sports: maybe college football can skip the games and just have polls

Posted on August 24th, 2009 by Alan Spoll

This week, the Associated Press published its first college football poll of the year, listing the University of Florida Gators as the number one team in the land. Of course, none of the teams in the poll have played a single game yet. On the face of it, ranking teams based on nothing but speculation couldn’t do any harm, right? Everywhere you look, someone is posting a list of something. Yahoo seems to post a list of the top ten of something nearly every week. People love lists and polls. The problem with the preseason college football polls in Division 1-A (I continue to boycott the ridiculous names the NCAA has tried to foist on us for its football divisions the past couple of years) is that they actually can and often do have a significant impact on the championship hunt.

As you likely know, Division 1-A has no playoff. I could rant about that subject from now until the season is over, but I’ll save that for another column. The point here is that, because there is no playoff, the polls go a long way toward determining the eventual mythical champion. Yes, it’s true that the A.P. poll is no longer used in the calculations performed by the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). There are other polls for that. The A.P. poll is still the one that seems to have the most impact, as far as public perception. A team that is not ranked in the preseason poll has a very tough hill to climb, as far as getting themselves into the championship picture, no matter how well they perform. With no playoff, a team’s ranking is an enormous component in that determination. And a team’s ranking is determined, not just by how the team plays, but also by how it was ranked the week before. If an unranked team opens the season with a huge win over a highly ranked team, does that team jump to the top of the rankings? I don’t have the whole history of college football polls in front of me, but I would guess that an unranked team has never jumped to number one in a single week. More likely, they would be ranked, but somewhere in the middle. In fact, the team they beat might still be ranked above them. How ludicrous is that? You beat a team, but remain ranked below them, simply because of your position (or lack of a position) in a poll that was published before anyone had seen any of the teams play.

If college football is going to continue to ignore the obvious need for a playoff, they should abolish all official polls until the fifth or sixth week of the season, once the people voting have had a chance to see each team play a number of different oppponents. This would eliminate all of that impact of a team starting off unranked.

By the way, the A.P. has installed Florida as the most dominant preseason favorite in the history of the poll, giving them 58 first place votes out of 60 voters. Why even bother playing the games?

Bad sports, continued:

2) Not specifically sports related, but Washington Capitols goalie Jose Theodore’s two-year-old son died this week. Terrible news. Is it just me, or do the children of athletes seem to be victimized by disease and accidents more than those of regular people? I am amazed at how often I hear this kind of thing.

3) The new mega-stadium that Dallas Cowboys’ egomaniac owner Jerry Jones built is certainly impressive. It includes an amazingly huge high definition screen that hangs over the center of the field. Awesomely (if you are a Cowboys hater like I am), the screen may be too low. Titans punter A.J. Trapasso hit the underside of the structure with one of his punts on Friday. This was after it was hit regularly during pre-game warmups. The NFL is investigating to see if it needs to be moved or raised.

Good sports:

1) For only the second time in Major League Baseball history, a game ended on an unassisted triple play. Eric Bruntlett, of the Philadelphia Phillies, was the fielder involved, atoning for his error earlier in the inning. Great way to end a game.

2) Michelle Wie has had a lot of trouble fitting in on the LPGA tour. For all of her tremendous physical skills, she has been looked at as someone who has never earned her position. She has played in a number of mens events, due to her ability to hit the ball much farther than other women on the tour, but has never distinguished herself in those events, never even making a cut in a PGA event. At the same time, she has failed to show that she can win on the women’s tour as well. This weekend, though, she played in the Solheim Cup in Illinois, a team event. She put up the best record (3-0-1) of anyone on the team, and also showed that maybe she’s not such a bad person after all.

3) Sure, I never made it to the Little League World Series back in my days of playing. Still, I am pretty sure I never played against anyone who looked like Luke Ramirez. All six foot two, two hundred pounds of him. Wow.

Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday

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Alan Spoll

Alan Spoll is a software quality assurance director from the suburbs of Philadelphia where he lives with his wonderful wife and children. He has spent his entire life as a passionate fan of the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, and Penn State. Recent Phillies success aside, you will understand his natural negativity. Follow me on Twitter - @DocAlan02