Yes, it’s polling season.
But as we’ve found out in recent years in politics AND college football, polls can be pretty meaningless. In the Season of the Virus, the weekly college football polls are even more useless than usual.
Remember, this is the season where the “Power Five” programs aren’t playing many – if any – non-conference games, top level players have opted out for health reasons, conferences don’t all play the same number of games, and every team was declared bowl-eligible before the season.
This is essentially the same as your typical NFL preseason.
It’s exhibition football.
And it will all end with a bunch of asterisks.
Preseason polls that come out over the summer are educated guesswork, nothing more. They aren’t taken seriously anymore for very good reason. No one has seen any team take even one snap. The only college football poll that matters doesn’t come out until mid-October (in a normal year) after six or seven weeks of games have been played. The preseason polls are talk show and podcast fodder, nothing more.
This year, with the delayed starts, cancelled games and awkward scheduling, we have weekly polls in mid-October that include teams that have played three or four games, and teams that have yet to play a single down. Voters are supposed to rank teams that they haven’t seen play in almost a year? Based on what, computer simulations, projections and last year’s stats?
Having college football polls every week this season is a desperate attempt to normalize this glorified exhibition season. Same goes for having a playoff. Yes, we all want things to get back to being “normal” again, but shouldn’t we want them to be valid more?
Example: We all expect Ohio State to be excellent again this year when they finally kick off their abbreviated eight-game schedule in two weeks. The Buckeyes typically reload and are one of the best teams in the nation every year. But so are LSU and Oklahoma, typically. Both were highly ranked in the preseason, and yet they’ve both lost twice already.
So someone please explain the validity of ranking Ohio State No. 6 before we’ve even seen them play? Same with No. 9 Penn State and No. 12 Oregon.
On the flip side, there is No. 15 BYU. They’re 4-0 and ranked below these three teams? Based on what, pure conjecture?
It’s silly to have any Big 10 or Pac-12 teams ranked at this point, but it’s even sillier for that same conjecture-based polling to have Cincinnati (No. 8) as one of the top-10 teams in the country, or Louisiana-Lafayette (No. 21) as a Top 25 team. When will that ever happen? Come on, man.
If Louisiana-Lafayette and now unranked LSU played next week, the Tigers would win by three touchdowns. (We’ve seen both teams play.)
Of course everything will change. That’s the nature of these meaningless polls. We’ve already seen a bunch of the unexpected. Besides both Oklahoma and LSU having already lost twice and now being unranked (Texas can also be added to that list,. Alabama just gave up nearly 50 points to Ole Miss. Florida lost a home game to Texas A&M. Anything can happen in a typical college football season, much less a messed up one that’s just getting started. What’s happening already this season is even more crazy than usual.
All the more reason to ignore the polls.
The next great debate will be about the College Football Playoff. The Big Ten’s late starting abbreviated season doesn’t end until mid-December (assuming the spread of the virus doesn’t get a lot worse and cancel everything.) The Pac-12 will finish a seven-game season later than normal as well. So how and when do the pollsters pick the two other teams that will fill in the bracket with perennials Clemson and Alabama? What happens to the bowl games (two have already been cancelled)? Will the playoff committee be forced to move college football into a bubble?
All these are far more valid concerns and deserve your focus far more than who’s ranked where in these meaningless 2020 polls.
Listen to Mark Knudson on Monday’s at 12:30 with Brady Hull on AM 1310 KFKA and on Saturday mornings on “Klahr and Kompany” on AM 1600 ESPN Denver.
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