An Open Letter to the College Football Poll Voters
| 6
|
by Suckatsports
Dear College Football Voters,
I'd like to take this area to thank you for your time in between brushing your teeth to complete your college football ballot, I know it's a tough task. To this end, voters, I'd like to give you a few pointers on casting votes, since they seem a bit haphazard.
First of all, I think it would be beneficial for both yourselves, and us (the audience) if you were all to get together once a year and decide what exactly is the criteria that you will be voting on. I think even when you're dead wrong, and completely off the consistency of your awful ratings, it will make life easier for all of us. The fans complain often about the results of the rankings which is similar to the officiating in the football games, but they can quantify that as, "well, at least it's consistently bad." If this were the case, there's a chance you'll hear less griping. I thought bringing this up first would get it out of the way, because it's never going to happen.
Second of all, it would be fantastic if you could watch some of the games. I know, I know, it's nearly impossible to watch all the games, but if you're voting, there's no reason you should be anywhere except in front of a TV all of Saturday. It is your duty and responsibility to see with your own two eyes what the team looks like - as you well know, the final score just doesn't tell the story.
Now that we're beyond things unreasonable to you, let's move onto what the voting should actually look like.
Some voters rank teams based purely on numbers: win-loss record, and strength of schedule of opponents. Others take a more simplistic approach and use their pre-season ranking as a basis for moving teams up and down based on pure outcomes - King of the Hill. Yet others, go completely to the opposite side of the spectrum, almost completely ignoring the record and going by the "smell test". Meaning, a team looks really good, and even though they lost a couple of games, they're still one of the best teams I think. In and of themselves all of these are flawed, but the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle.
Playing for the national championship isn't a right, it's something that is earned through 12 games of the regular season. It should be a combination of seeing a team on the field, seeing their competition, and seeing their record. Using anything but a combination of the aforementioned criteria just invites violence. Cowherd (think God he's not a voter) said he still thought Florida was one of the best teams in the country, even though they had two losses, and thus should be ranked high. Well, that may be the case, but by having two losses, they no longer have the right to play for the national championship and jump teams that play in major conferences and have no losses.
This is akin to any kind of bracket. It's not the best team overall that always wins in the end, it's just the best team that day, and that's the only fair way of doing it. George Mason went to the Final Four, and there's not one team that they beat that on paper, by record, or smell test that they were actually better than. I'm not advocating a playoff, I just don't think it works for college football. But I am advocating the use of the regular season as a playoff tournament to place people in the national championship.
There are teams who with early season losses automatically disqualify themselves from contention. By the end of the year, 10 weeks later, it's no longer the same team, they're more experienced, they're better, and they may be lighting the world on fire (see: USC 2002 - they didn't go the championship but looked like the best team). But it's just not fair to put them in the national championship even though they may be playing better now when they didn't play at that level during their losses.
Please, I urge you to consider multiple criteria in your decision. I urge you to be informed about the team and who they've played. And most of all, I urge you to watch the teams on the field and not just read the box scores. Because, when these things are lacking, you just look foolish.
Sincerely, Hermano, We Suck at Sports
When analysis goes wrong [Buckeye Commentary]
This post is cross-published from We Suck at Sports.
