Dear NCAA.. stop ranking teams this early in the season

[Hasselbeck]

Every week so far a "Top 5" team has gone down.. this week .. Penn State sucks.. Ole Miss looks terrible.. then Top 10 teams Cal and Miami get blown the fuck out.

Now the pollsters want to tell me.. with a straight face.. that Boise State is the 5th best team in the country?

Stop ranking teams this early in the season.. there's a reason why were seeing all these upsets.. these teams aren't that good!

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

A Playoff fixes everything, and would make a great sport with the most irrelevent postseason possible, into a great sport with a great postseason.

It would also make these fraudulent polls into meaningless "guides"...which is exactly what they should be.

 

[NAHSTE]

Ok, but none of the teams are that good. Wouldn't you still have the same problem if you started in week 5 as you do when you start in week 1?

We still know nothing about these teams. Even if you start later, you are still gonna see mistakes.

There are no good teams right now after the top 3. What makes you think that will change a few weeks down the road?

 

[JeremyHight]

Can you point me to the official NCAA poll? I cannot seem to find it. I can find a bunch of polls from groups in no way directly affiliated with the NCAA, like the USA Today Coaches Poll and the AP Poll, but I cannot seem to find the NCAA one.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

The initial poll should come out after week 5 (most teams, if not all, have played four games, many OOC).

After that, let the polls flow. The idea of a pre-season poll basically makes the season a "ladder" for a team, in which they have to climb up and jump teams throughout the season.

 

[Hasselbeck]

Ok, but none of the teams are that good. Wouldn't you still have the same problem if you started in week 5 as you do when you start in week 1?

We still know nothing about these teams. Even if you start later, you are still gonna see mistakes.

There are no good teams right now after the top 3. What makes you think that will change a few weeks down the road?

It'll never be perfect there's always an overrated team.. but would Boise State be #5 in the country after 6 weeks? I doubt it.

Ole Miss was never the 4th best team in the country. Thursday didn't need to happen for that statement to be true. Penn State was never the 5th best team in the country.. Saturday Night didn't need to happen for that statement to be true.

By ranking teams in the preseason.. you're basically creating an escalator to the top using rankings that were probably already way off.

 

[Hasselbeck]

Can you point me to the official NCAA poll? I cannot seem to find it. I can find a bunch of polls from groups in no way directly affiliated with the NCAA, like the USA Today Coaches Poll and the AP Poll, but I cannot seem to find the NCAA one.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings/_/week/5

 

[DSpydr84]

There's no way to predict what a group of 19-23 year olds will do on any given week, whether you start the rankings now or five weeks from now. Upsets will always happen.

 

[Archer]

I was more annoyed that a team like Washington who hadn't won in 18 games (I know they pushed LSU) could jump into the top 25 after one win v a USC team that historically drops game(s) that they shouldn't .

Sidenote : They need to scrap pre-season polls all together imo

 

[BigHouseUSA]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings/_/week/5

I think you missed his point there. He's saying it's not the NCAA ranking teams this early, or at all. It's USA Today and the AP, contrary to what the title of this tread says.

 

[SHOGUN]

I think you missed his point there. He's saying it's not the NCAA ranking teams this early, or at all. It's USA Today and the AP, contrary to what the title of this tread says.

Bingo.

 

[Sharkweather]

There's no way to predict what a group of 19-23 year olds will do on any given week, whether you start the rankings now or five weeks from now. Upsets will always happen.

This is the answer.

 

[KillaK]

We need the rankings this early, if we didn't have it then what would we all bitch about?

 

[St. Francisco]

I agree that preseason polls should be eliminated, and come out later in the season (week 4-6, somewhere around there), but upsets like these are always going to happen. Teams are going to be overrated based on last year's success, and the name of the school. Just the nature of the beast.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

I agree that preseason polls should be eliminated, and come out later in the season (week 4-6, somewhere around there), but upsets like these are always going to happen. Teams are going to be overrated based on last year's success, and the name of the school. Just the nature of the beast.

Playoff would make rankings irrelevent, just like b'ball.

 

[Prodigal Son]

How about the NCAA stop keeping score as well.

 

[Bear Pand]

They need to scrap the preseason polls and not release any top 25 rankings until mid-late October when the BCS poll comes out. They also need to ditch stupid concepts like ranking teams high cause the school is prestigious, not dropping teams down unless the lose and most importantly not ranking teams based on what they did last year.

I'm tired of seeing teams like Penn State beat three garbage schools and end up in the top 10 just cause they're Penn State, and the other schools ahead of them lost.

 

[Sportsbuck]

People are still going to rank teams regardless of wether there is an organized poll to vote in at the time.

 

[padman59]

I agree with others who suggest making the first official poll sometime in October. Wait until teams already have a conference game or two under their belt, which gives some indication of how teams are performing relative to one another. While the polls still won't be perfect, they will at least have a respectable basis. The amount of top ten teams losing this weekend combined with the fashion in which many went down is laughable. Such an occurrence should seldom happen.

 

[Hasselbeck]

I think you missed his point there. He's saying it's not the NCAA ranking teams this early, or at all. It's USA Today and the AP, contrary to what the title of this tread says.

:jonesy: at me.