Some people think that college football polls should not be released until later in the season so that early polls don’t bring unfair benefits to the early favorites. But preseason and early season polls don’t cause projected favorites to rise; rather they reflect the views of the experts at any point in the season.

MITCH BLATT

In 2005, the USC Trojans had most of their starters returning after winning the national championship, and they were expected to do so again. They started the season ranked #1 and went through the season undefeated, never budging from #1, and then lost to Texas in the national championship. Some people use this as an example of why we shouldn’t have preseason polls. USC was #1 to start the season, the argument goes, and so they have it easy, because they don’t have to do anything but remain there.

When my fellow Juiced Sports columnist Scott Jacobs was interviewed by the Big 12 Conference Call show earlier this week, he was asked about the early season polls, and he said that one good thing about them is they bring interest to early season games, as with the #10 vs #15 matchups, etc.

That’s another good reason for having polls released so early, but it doesn’t relate directly to the question of whether or not early polls have any impact on final polls. They don’t.

To go back to the argument about whether USC benefited in 2005 from being ranked #1 going into the season–whether they had it easy, not having to do anything, so to speak… They had to go undefeated and win the Pac-10. Their #1 ranking didn’t help them win any games. It was simply a reflection of the fact that most people thought they were the best team, and, as the season’s results showed, the AP and coaches were right in thinking that they were one of the best teams.

Now Bleacher Report reprises the same argument after last week’s games to say that South Carolina and Michigan State, among other teams, have it hard because they were ranked lower going into the season. Another bad argument, because a teams’ initial ranking doesn’t have any impact on how hard it is to win a game.

Bleacher Report’s Kimberly Nash says:

It’s not fair that South Carolina has to start at the bottom, while Alabama gets a pass to the top—just because they played great football…in 2009.

South Carolina doesn’t have to start at the bottom; everyone starts at the same place–0 wins–and tries to get to 12. The critical point is this: Weekly rankings don’t impact who gets to the national championship. Wins are the variable that impacts who plays in the national championship.

The final rankings decide who plays in the national championship (or other bowl games), and the final rankings are based on wins. So whether a team is unranked or ranked #1 going into the season, they both have the same opportunity to win each game of the season and end up #1 at the end of the year.

Certainly a team ranked down the list will have a harder time moving up as the season goes along, but each week, more teams fall (more teams are exposed), and by the end of the season there are only a handful of teams with one loss or no losses. So that team that no one cared about at the start of the season, if they are in fact a championship-worthy team, and they show it with each game of their season, they will be ranked in the top by the end of the season.

Any undefeated team from a BCS conference, no matter what people thought of them at the start of the season, will make it to the national championship. Duke, Indiana, Vanderbilt, or Northwestern would go to the national championship if they went undefeated. They all have the same 12 opportunities as Alabama does to go undefeated. (Boise State and TCU are a different matter, of course, but that is because they are from non-BCS conferences and play weaker schedules, not because of anything regarding the weekly polls.)

In fact, Nash inadvertently makes this very point in her own article:

South Carolina (a team that just beat the brakes off the No. 1 team in the land), Michigan State (the only team that has been able to slow Denard Robinson down) nor Nevada (who managed to beat BYU in Provo) were listed in the AP Preseason Top 25.

By stark contrast, you know what teams were listed in said poll: Pittsburgh (a team that has two wins on the year), Virginia Tech (a team that lost to a I-AA opponent in Week 2) and Penn State (a team that just lost by 20 points to Illinois…in HAPPY VALLEY).

Indeed, the preseason prognosticators had made some mistakes. They didn’t know South Carolina would be good and they erroneously thought Virginia Tech would be. Now the season has played out thus far, and we know that those assumptions were wrong, so the rankings have changed to reflect that. As the season continues to play out and teams in the top 25 continue to play each other or lose to unranked teams, the schedule will continue to be adjusted per the results, and we will end up with a more accurate picture of what is happening at any given time. By the end of the season, a few teams will be unquestionably know to be the best.

Another point: Simply by ending early season polls, you aren’t changing anything. Sports fans and writers talk about sports and think about sports, and they will always be thinking about and debating who is the best team. Even in the professional sports with a playoff system and essentially no reason for league-wide rankings, there are people making “power rankings” for ESPN.

The point is this: Weekly top 25 rankings don’t guide thought; rather they reflect thought. Sure, there are a lot of casual fans who might look to the top 25 to gauge what to think about a team, but the actual coaches and the media voters–the people who are voting–are going to base their votes on what teams they themselves think are the best teams. Thus, the results of the polling doesn’t show that voters rank teams highly because they are ranked highly in last weeks polls; rather the teams are ranked highly because the voters think that they are the best teams.

Get rid of the polls, and voters will still have their biases and preconceived notions going into the season. Those biases simply won’t be reflected to the masses in the form of rankings. A lot of the writers and coaches thought Virginia Tech would be a force this year–that’s because they looked at the team and thought they looked tough–now they know they are wrong.

The key point: Rankings don’t give any advantage in winning games. In fact people like Boise State’s coach, now that they are favorites this season, still try to say they are underdogs just to “rally” their teams. If a team can go through the season undefeated, it doesn’t matter what people though of that team at the beginning of the season. They will change their mind when they see how good that team is.

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