The College Football Playoff Selection Committee has come under a lot of fire in the past few years, whether for favoring the same few teams year in and year out, or undervaluing Group of 5 teams, or whatever your personal grievance is (I'm still not over #5 Georgia, #6 Ohio State from 2018), but all in all I think they've done a pretty good job. As when evaluating all things, we should consider the Playoff in the context of what it replaced, which is in this case the BCS.
The BCS was endlessly tinkered with over its 16-year lifespan, with the final form being essentially a mix of the leading human polls with a little computer spice sprinkled in. One of these human polls was the Harris Poll, which wasn't a thing until the AP decided that the BCS wasn't supporting, at which point the Harris Poll was created out of whole cloth to make sure that the humans still outnumbered the computers. The other was the Coaches Poll, voted on by people who couldn't possibly have watched any games but their own. And the AP poll decided to keep giving out their own national championship award, not based on the BCS, just for kicks. Did this system give us any better results?
One need look no further than this week's disastrous AP poll to find out. Say what you want about the Playoff Committee; I don't think they've ever screwed the pooch this hard, even in an early season poll. Let's take a look at some of the highlights:
1. Georgia
2. Iowa
OK, no complaints so far. These teams clearly have the best resumes to date.
3. Cincinnati
That's fine, they're hanging their hats on that one win over Notre Dame, but it was a convincing win over a good team, on the road.
4. Oklahoma
Yeah, all right, not dominating their opponents, but a win's a win, and Texas a nice feather in your Stetson.
5. Alabama
What? Alabama? The team that just lost to an unranked (now ranked in the 20s) team? There's a good argument that the Tide have the worst loss of any one-loss Power 5 team not named Pitt or Oregon. Yeah, the road win over Florida (by 2 points) is nice, but Florida has two losses. Someone else must have beaten the Gators as well. Like...
11. Kentucky
Did I miss something? Are the 'Cats 6-0 or not? Did they not match one of Bama's premier wins? I get that nobody had them ranked preseason, and most people probably wouldn't pick them in a match against Georgia or Ohio State, but we're six games in and Kentucky hasn't tripped up once, facing an SEC schedule no less. Why are they ranked below Alabama, let alone outside the top 10? Let's see who the teams are in the middle.
6. Ohio State
I get it. It's fun to watch teams grind their opponents into dust week in and week out. The problem is, nobody cares when those opponents are Akron, Rutgers, and Maryland. The Buckeyes have had one chance to impress so far this year, and they blew it, at home to boot. The schedule gives lots of opportunities for quality wins coming up, but OSU is totally empty in that category as of now. You can't rank based on "I think they're actually good"; you need to see them execute against a team with a pulse. Let's see who's behind them...
7. Penn State
Really. You're going to knock Penn State behind Ohio State for losing to the #2 team, on the road, by 3 points, after seeing a big lead get carried off the field with their starting quarterback. There's a reason the Lions were #4 last week. They're walking the walk. They went into Camp Randall and came out with a W. They faced the Auburn Tigers of the mighty SEC and walked away unscathed. What about this season says "Ohio State deserves to be ranked ahead of Penn State?" At least the quality of the Iowa loss must count for something. I'd hate to see the kind of nasty losses keeping down the teams from #8 on down...
8. Michigan
AP poll, why are you making me do this? Ah well, here we go. Do you like watching Ohio State roll their opponents? Let me introduce the Wolverines, who disrespected Washington and Wisconsin the same way. Did you like watching Penn State dispatch the Badgers in Camp Randall? Again, Michigan did that, and in blowout fashion rather than sneaking away with a win. Did you like..watching Ohio State and Penn State...you know...lose? Because the Wolverines haven't done that yet. It's OK to admit you were wrong at the start of the season, AP poll voters. Time to give Michigan some credit.
9. Oregon
Quick, which team in America has the best win according to the AP poll? That would be Texas A&M, but in second place would be Oregon, who beat the #6 Ohio State Buckeyes. Maybe Oregon's win is even better since it came on the road. Anyway, Oregon has the same number of losses as the Buckeyes. And Oregon is ranked 3 spots lower. Figure that one out. Must be that Stanford loss weighing them down, keeping them below all of the other one-loss and undefeated teams...
10. Michigan State
Aw, come on. This, out of all the rankings so far, makes this least sense, for so, so many reasons. First of all, why is undefeated Michigan State ranked behind Alabama, Ohio State, Penn State, AND Oregon? You can dog the Spartans' schedule for lack of a signature win, but it's not like Alabama or Oregon lost to world beaters either. And if you're concerned about win quality, HOW is Michigan State ranked ahead of Kentucky, which has a win over Florida? And I get that Michigan can easily be ranked ahead of Michigan State, due to win quality, but how does it make any sense to sandwich Oregon in the middle?
That's enough for now; we don't need to go into why Wake Forest is ranked behind Coastal Carolina or why Ole Miss is seven spots back of Ohio State. It's clear what's going on, and it's the same disease that has infected the traditional college football polls since their inception: they're too conservative. Instead of throwing out the rankings each week and creating a new 1-25 based on each team's season performance, the pollsters look at the previous week's poll and say things like "Oh, they lost, they should drop a few spots. Oh, they won, I guess they should go up." And so halfway through the season, we see the teams that were expected to be good, like Ohio State and Alabama, hovering around the top 5 with mediocre resumes, while undefeated teams like Michigan, Michigan State, and Kentucky have had to fight their way up from their unranked preseason positions to barely (or barely not) crack the top 10.
And this isn't even taking into account how bonkers some of the individual ballots are. Thanks to the wisdom of crowds, the worst excesses of the AP writers are balanced out, but one need only look at the grid view of the individual ballots to see some real galaxy brain takes on the top teams in college football. By my count, that's four ballots with Alabama at #2. Browsing through the Twitter responses to these rankings (always a mistake) I saw a comment (from a lawyer no less, Kyrie eleison) that "I think Bama at 2 is clear. Bama and Georgia are the two best teams. People put too much stock into records." Because who needs wins and losses when you know who the best teams are? Might as well select the Playoff field in August and play twelve exhibition games to get them warmed up.
Thankfully, there's a lot of season left to play, and even more thankfully, the AP poll will be irrelevant once more in just a few short weeks, as it is every season upon the release of the Playoff rankings.
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