Preseason Polls
If this is inappropriate the day before a game, so be it. I meant to post this a couple days ago but I got caught up in school and stuff. So my question is, should preseason polls be done away with?
I am personally tired of the hype that comes with all of the preseason ranked teams. Many people have said that polls should not come out until week 6. But, I was thinking of a way to keep the polls just limit the effect they have on the first weeks of the season. My idea is as follows:
Preseason: The Associated Press releases their top 5 teams before the season starts. The top 5 is usually agreed upon by most people and stays the same for most of the season. The rest of the 20 teams change multiple times over the course of the season and are never completely agreed upon.
Week 1: After the first week of games, the press releases the next 5 teams in the rankings.
Week 2: The press releases the top 15 teams.
It continues adding 5 teams until 25 is reached. I think this would improve accuracy as instead of just guessing which team should be ranked 23rd, they can gradually get a reading on the best teams. This would also help even out the strength of schedule issues. What I mean by that is, instead of a team getting highly praised for beating a team that was ranked 9th at the beginning of the season, they just get credit for beating a "good" team. An example of this would be the Texas A&M South Carolina game. I was a little frustrated that A&M got so much credit for beating a supposedly good team that had not played a down yet. Everybody all of sudden thinks that Texas A&M is amazing and they still think South Carolina is just not as good.
Let me know what you guys think. I am always open to criticism.
September 5th, 2014 at 2:48 PM ^
I have no problem with early polls being inaccurate. At that point in the season they're just there for entertainment, anyway.
I think the most convincing argument against early polls is that they create later bias in the polls, with teams rated highly in the preseason advantaged relative to other teams. For example, if Michigan and OSU have identically good 2014 seasons, OSU could end up ranked higher just because they started higher, which wouldn't be right.
With the selection committee around now, the rankings at the end of the regular season probably aren't as meaningful, since they the committee won't mechanically incorporate the rankings in the way that the computers did. Polls still could play a role in what committee members do, consciously or subconsiously, but I think the potential for poll-related problems is pretty low.
So to me, early season polls are kind of fun to follow and come at relatively low cost (this year, at least)... I'd keep them.
September 5th, 2014 at 2:29 PM ^
Preseason polls are stupid but good luck getting the AP or the Coaches to do this. With the playoffs polls aren't as important because the committee gets to look back at a body of work over an entire season as opposed to the current running average weighted heavily to the most recent data point.
September 5th, 2014 at 2:34 PM ^
It is never going to change. And we'll have less of an issue regarding it in years UM is a top 5-10 team again. These polls actually helped us and gave us a benefit of the doubt for decades.
I don't think it makes any sense either until week 6 but we can opine until we are blue in the face - see sentence one.
September 5th, 2014 at 2:38 PM ^
Even if official preseason polls went away, that wouldn't stop writers/bloggers from creating their own top 25 polls. I am sure respected writers/bloggers' top 25s would act as starting points for most voters once the polls officially start.
There will always be some kind of bias, and I don't think eliminating the official preseason polls will help.
September 5th, 2014 at 2:40 PM ^
Polls and pointless speculation are here to stay because CONTENT needs to be produced, regardless of how ludicrously hot the takes are. All about dat content, gotta get the clicks.
September 5th, 2014 at 3:06 PM ^
Fox, NBC etc. create the HUGE hype for the early season games ala the USCe - A&M, Georgia - Clemson, or Oregon - MSU matchups.
They aren't going away and - as noted above - most years this helps M as we are generally overrated going into most years just like ND, USC, OSU etc. due to name recognition.
September 5th, 2014 at 3:07 PM ^
September 5th, 2014 at 3:11 PM ^
As I see it, Preseason polls are just made up for fun. They get discussion going, get fans excited, gives the media something to talk about, etc.
I look at preseaon polls and compare them to Hallmark holidays, such as, Valentines, Mother's and Father's day (even though they mean well). They don't really truly matter and they only serve very few purposes.
I think preseason polls are okay, they don't really do any true harm, because they don't mean anything. It's all about the real polls that come out in the 7th or 8th week of football that really matter and it's after all the voters get time to see all the teams play and make a decision. I highly doubt any of them are going to care about who was ranked where in the preseason.
So, let's just let them be. Just like we have with the holidays.
September 5th, 2014 at 3:16 PM ^
September 5th, 2014 at 3:39 PM ^
I was wondering how South Carolina got ranked in the top 10 preseason. The lost their entire defenive line and most importanly Clowney, they lose their starting QB and replaced him with someone had played pretty badly the previous season. Same could be said for Clemson, which gave Georgia a huge boost. Nobody knows how good or bad Clemson would be this year but chances are they wont be better than last years team.
As far as preseason polls go, I don't mind them as long as they adjust them after week 1-2.
Did FSU look like a champion? Did OSU and Alabama look like top 10 teams?
A prime example is Florida a few years ago. They where a top 5 preseason team but never really played well the entire season. They had to lose 4 games top drop out of the top 20 and 6 game to drop out of the top 25
September 5th, 2014 at 3:38 PM ^
The Preseason Polls are all about Hype which equate to increased TV ratings. So they are here to stay.
September 5th, 2014 at 6:11 PM ^
I like having preseason rankings but they mean nothing. We shouldn't have started 2007 # 5 and we shouldn't have started 2006 # 14 and 2011 unranked.