It's Time to Get Rid of Preseason Polls

Preseason polls are a necessary evil. They help hype the upcoming college football season and are a guide for both fans and the television networks to circle what games are important.

But I don’t like them, not one bit.

I tolerate them in basketball and other sports, because they’re mostly harmless. In college basketball, 68 teams make the tournament so it’s hard for me to lose too much sleep over team No. 69. Did Virginia Commonwealth make the Final Four as a play-in team? Yes, but that’s the exception, not the norm. Most teams with double-digit seeds find themselves weeded out by the Sweet 16. And virtually every Top 25 team makes the tournament.

However in college football — as my brother pointed out in his recent blog — the preseason polls are paramount to success. Almost too paramount, because they’re entirely based on past performance and future hope. Nobody really knows how a team is going to perform until it takes the field.

If you don’t believe getting a strong preseason ranking is important, look no further than last season. The 2014 College Football Playoff featured four teams ranked in the AP preseason top five, and all three of the top three teams — Florida State, Alabama, and Oregon.

The Coaches’ Poll produced the same top two teams — Florida State and Alabama — but Oregon was ranked fourth and Ohio State sixth. That’s still four of the top six, and three of the top five, reaching the playoff.

To be fair, Ohio State did drop all the way to No. 18 just two weeks into the season and battled numerous key injuries — going all the way to its third-string quarterback — to qualify. But the lowest any of the other three dropped to was No. 11 (Oregon).

If you’re the more extreme kind of person, take the final 13 years of the BCS Championship. Ten of the last 13 BCS Championship games featured at least one team that began the year as preseason No. 1 or No. 2 in the AP Poll:

2000 — Florida State, No. 2 (Lost title)
2001 — Miami (Fl), No. 2 (Won title)
2002 — Miami (Fl), No. 1 (Lost title)
2003 — Oklahoma, No. 1 (Lost title)
2004 — USC & Oklahoma
2005 — USC & Texas
2006 — Ohio State, No. 1 (Lost title)
2007 — LSU, No. 2 (Won title)
2008 — Neither (Oklahoma qualified at No. 4)
2009 — Texas, No. 2 (Lost title)
2010 — Neither (Oregon qualified at No. 11, Auburn No. 22)
2011 — Alabama, No. 2 (Won title)
2012 — Alabama, No. 2 (Won title)
2013 — Neither (Florida State qualified at No. 11, Auburn unranked)

In 2004 and 2005, both preseason top two teams went wire-to-wire. Only three times did neither team qualify, but in 2008 Oklahoma was the preseason No. 4. The other two years — 2010 and 2013 — featured two teams ranked outside of the Top 10, with the highest of those two being ranked No. 11 and Auburn being completely disrespected.

Poll supporters will point to the fact that the preseason editions usually get it right. I say, are the polls getting it right or are the pollsters too afraid to admit they had it wrong? There are usually a few teams in the Top 10 that hang on because pollsters are too afraid to correct a preseason mistake when a team keeps winning, no matter how unimpressive it seems.

Is it fair to give a team such an advantage based solely on the year before? There are countless years where a less impressive team holds onto a coveted championship spot simply because it wins ugly.

(Side note: I’m not talking about Florida State. The Seminoles went 13-0 and were defending champions. They hadn’t lost in 27-consecutive games. Anyone who says they didn’t belong in the field of four last year is an idiot.)

But, while I think Florida State should have qualified under a four-team playoff, I’m not so sure it was one of the two best teams in the country despite it’s unblemished record and impressive win streak. What if last year was a BCS year? The two teams playing for the title would have been Alabama and Florida State, both wound up losing in the semifinals. (And in the case of Florida State “losing” is a very polite way of describing it.)

Ohio State, the eventual champion, wouldn't have even been considered for one of the two spots. The debate would have centered all around Florida State, Alabama and Oregon and as we know all three proved to be unworthy of the crown.

The College Football Playoff was a massive success last season, but it only reinforced the truth most knew all along — that strong teams routinely get overlooked based on past performance. And with such a small sample size, it’s impossible to establish a fair process to select the two best teams. I’d argue picking four isn’t much easier.

There are two solutions. The first and more likely of the two is to decrease the margin of error by expanding the playoffs to eight or 16. TCU, Baylor and Michigan State — who only lost to Ohio State and Oregon, the two finalists — all could have legitimately won the title. An eight-team tournament would have been very interesting.

(Side note: My not-so-bold prediction is the playoffs will expand to at least eight by the time the first College Football Playoff contract expires in 2025.)

The second is to get rid of preseason polls. Don’t allow any poll to be released until four games have been played, this way voters can make judgments based on the 2015 version and not lock themselves into voting for a team despite winning very, very ugly.

College football doesn’t want the polls to go away, they generate a lot of hype for the upcoming season and help the networks dictate programming. The preseason football polls aren’t going anywhere. On paper the College Football Playoff selection committee generates its own rankings without being bound to the national polls, however I’m certain more than a few members sneak a glance at the rankings.

Selecting four teams with just 12, sometimes 13, games to go on is a hard enough process. Eliminating preseason polls and waiting a few games before evaluating the current version of each college football team would help make the process a little fairer.