Polls are fun for the people doing and consuming them. However, for the people whose lives are directly altered by them, well, not so much. With the latter being at the mercy of the former for reasons mostly still unknown, the Utah Utes find themselves in Still Disrespected Land, USA — population 10 or 12… depending on census takers.
Show me a team in the nation which has started off as well, while being as well-rounded a team, after defeating as many quality teams as Utah has, and I will put a mirror in your face and call you a liar.
However, because the world craves preseason football polls, coupled with Utah not being ranked that high before actual football is played, the Utes — whose resume is as good or better than anyone in the country — find themselves on the outside looking in, at least in the realm of polling.
Everyone already knows that the Coaches’ Poll is relatively useless. Steve Spurrier isn’t going back on a Sunday morning, after playing on a Saturday, to watch DVR-ed games he may have missed. Even if the Head Ball Coach decided to not use some free time for golf, it is a rather safe bet to assume he is going to spend his time trying to make his team better — not worrying about casting some vote.
That applies to nearly all coaches in the country, as anyone with an internet connection has come to find out; the head coaches of football programs aren’t usually the ones who cast their votes for the polls.
Then we have the AP Poll, which is still an unnecessary and sometimes as equally uneducated a poll as the Coaches’ Poll. Beat writers throughout the nation cast votes on the top 25 after spending all week spending an unhealthy amount of time covering one and only one team. Beat writers are busy meeting (at least we hope) deadlines, going to practices, interviewing players, and eating dinner with their families every fourth night of the week. Yet, we expect them to have as much knowledge — if not more — than the coaches about dozens of different teams.
Ugh.
There isn’t a soul who has a vote in the top 25 of either poll who is watching 25 full college football games a weekend. It is IMPOSSIBLE to do so in a logistic sense — portions of 25 games? Sure. Not 25 full games. No one can do that within the confines of a given Saturday.
Moreover, let’s not stop at the number 25. If writers want to be as accurate as possible, they’d have to pay attention to teams just outside the top 25. Each person with a vote would have to watch more likely upwards of 50-ish games a weekend.
Highlight shows or not, if we are to expected to treat top-25 polls with as much respect as we give them by way of media and fan attention, I would like to think the people casting their votes are putting as much time into each slotting of each program as it seems to warrant — except it actually doesn’t warrant all that much attention anyway.
Why? The answer is as follows: Many folks failed to realize how good Utah was going to be before the season, and as a result, the Utes are the ones currently suffering in the polls. While they can eventually climb, scrape, and win their way to a top-four ranking, it seems rather silly that — despite having a great resume which should already put them there — people are hesitant to shoot them up these arbitrary polls simply because they started so far behind other programs with lesser resumes.
This would be like a company not giving a job to a guy with a better resume and track record, merely because another candidate was waiting on the office for a few minutes longer, and he was only there longer because he doesn’t know how to keep track of time. Translated: Utah gets to stay pinned back in both polls because the ones doing the polls are poor at the job.
To be clear, it is rather unfair to say that coaches or media members are actually poor at their jobs. It is, honestly, as simple as this: It’s unrealistic to expect them to handle such a massive workload and be accurate as pollsters, which should not be part of their plate of responsibilities. This offers all the more reason to ignore, if not completely abolish, preseason polls.
By the end of the season, things will (most) likely work themselves out. If Utah ends up being as good as people now believe, the Utes should find themselves in the College Football Playoff no matter where their preseason polls projected them to be. Still, for fans of that program and people looking to prognosticate the rest of the way, it would be nice if we were all on the same page here — because it mostly feels like we are still making up “poll rules” as we go, and they’re almost always wrong except while using hindsight.
Can we just terminate preseason polls already? Outside of giving us talking points, what good does it do for anyone given their yearly inaccuracies?
