We’re one week away from the worst day on the CFB calendar
The college football preseason AP Poll is dumb, stupid, idiotic and a frustrating aspect of what is already a flawed sport.
We’ve already outlined how the playoff must be fixed and some of those changes are already in motion. But the next aspect of the sport in the crosshairs: a preseason ranking that has far too big an impact on how the season plays out.
So the AP Poll is a top 25 ranking that is based on the thoughts of a 62-person panel that includes sports writers and broadcasters from around the country. The poll comes out every week during the season, including an initial preseason ranking that is set to drop one week from today.
I understand the value of the poll and how it generates interest and money for the sport. I also understand its value throughout the season—finding a way to compare teams in conferences that may never play each other.
But the poll should not be a thing until Week 4 of the season, and here’s why:
First, there are several more accurate ranking systems to initially judge where teams stand both entering the season and throughout the first few weeks, ESPN’s SP+ and FPI to name two.
Second, the preseason ranking always ends up mattering way too much. And this is the case because of one main reason: confirmation bias.
Entering a college football season, nobody knows how the schedule and the contests will unfold. There are Group of 5 teams that emerge (Cincinnati last season), there are big programs that suffer upsets, teams deal with injuries and so much more. We all have a sense of where our favorite teams will stand, but there is no way during the preseason to ever accurately predict how good each team truly will be.
So when the Associated Press puts out the preseason poll, we often see the previous year’s results weigh in too heavily and big programs always find their way towards the top. As the season progresses and we learn about each team, though, it’s losses instead of true on-field performance that shifts the ranking around.
So when a school like Cincinnati goes undefeated after starting at No. 20, they’re faced with an insurmountable hill to climb up into the important top 4. It’s not that the preseason ranking is so terribly off, as people saw Cincinnati as a pretty good team. But being slotted at No. 20 makes it nearly impossible to rise far in the ranking when the only thing that’ll drop a school near the top is a significant loss.
The fix? Eliminating the preseason poll, wait until Week 4 to release the first true ranking and start actually evaluating teams based on the numbers that define their play. In simpler words: a 1-point victory against Syracuse should not be enough to keep a team in a slot when another school is shutting out opponents and purely dominating on the field. All wins and all losses are not created equal.
Sometimes they get it right as the season moves along, most notably moving undefeated Ohio State ahead of undefeated Clemson in Week 8 of the 2019 season after the Tigers were barely getting by against some ACC schools while the Buckeyes were arguably the best team in the country.
The sport should start using FPI rankings entering the season and for the first few weeks (including for the little number next to each school’s name) and wait for conference play to pick up before making decisions that already impact the final standings of each school.
It’s that easy, and then we won’t have to worry about the eventual 12-team playoff being automatically watered-down by schools that people thought would be good before the season even starts.
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