Why Go To The Polls Early?
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by user LastRow
Preseason polls are overrated! The first polls should not be posted until after the first two full weekends of college football are completed (not including the kickoff classic games or whatever the hell they’re called now)? Teams actually benefit from lofty preseason rankings while other teams that have breakout years suffer because they have to work hard all year to climb the polls, only to sometimes fall short at the end of the season because certain teams just are not budging from their lofty status. Almost every year, the college football champion will come out of the preseason top 10. What does this tell us? First, the guys who are predicting the contenders know what they are doing. That is good, but it also tells me that some teams that are pretty darn good but start the year as unknowns, have steep odds against them.
Lets take the Utah Utes for example two years ago…Run the table through the regular season. For this, the reward is to play a bullshit Big East champion in Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl…And wasn’t that a great matchup! The least the BCS could’ve done was put them in the Sugar Bowl against Auburn (another undefeated team). Wow, what you know take the winner of that game & put them against USC in a true National Championship Game…But no, for once in my life I wasn’t a ticket holder of the LastRow (believe it, I was in Club Level) when in attendance at the Orange Bowl gouging my eyes out watching a pathetic Oklahoma squad. This game I wish I was in the LastRow…Would’ve made it easier to jump from. Not saying the winner of the “Auburn-Utah Game” would’ve beat SC, but couldn’t they have put up a better performance than OU?
A team that starts the year in the top 10 and loses a game rarely falls out of the top 10, which allows that team to climb back into the championship picture. This sometimes even happens with teams with two losses that start the year in the top 10. The problem is these teams don't budge enough from the preseason poll to allow for room for other teams that are climbing the polls and often are having better seasons and beating stronger teams to realistically having a chance with the big boys. For the most part it’s always the same face year after year appearing…One would think since there’s seven months to accumulate these preseason polls better research could possibly be done to achieve more of an accurate first poll of the season. Ironically, the BCS system which we all love, as crazy as this might sound has a good policy when it comes to releasing their first polls…releasing it after the eighth week. This is all that’s basically worth a damn regarding the BCS.
So, how do we fix the problem? Here is an idea: Wait until after every team plays two games to evaluate the teams. There is too much that is unknown about teams in the preseason. No one has seen a single team play, and no one knows if a team actually will improve or decline from the previous year. Maybe two games are not enough because some teams could schedule weak opponents in order to receive a lofty status. Maybe wait until Oct. 1 when every team has four or five games under its belt. It just doesn’t make sense to vote on a teams expectations rather than performances? Hey, maybe if we all write our respective congressman, perhaps Congress may just have to step in and help in changing this policy too…Possibly even managing to get us a playoff in Division I College Football? Jose Canseco, we need you boy! So PLEASE write your Congressman and lets all save College Football!
LastRowSports.com
Date
Mon 07/31/06, 6:24 pm EST
