The first official college football poll has been revealed, with plenty of surprises. The Coaches Poll, often considered the second most reliable poll in the first few weeks of the season, was released Monday, and the debates have already begun.
But there’s a bigger question, should we even have this poll?
Should There Be Preseason Polls?
Everyone loves some preseason hype and headlines about college football, particularly when there isn’t a ton going on in the sports world (except with the Olympics this year). People are also obsessed with the Top 25 in college football because it is a badge of honor that goes next to the team’s name on the scorebug on the side of the screen. When Ole Miss is ranked No. 10, they aren’t presented as Ole Miss, they are presented as ’10 Ole Miss’.
But just because it is fun, does that make it right? Absolutely not.
In today’s college football, with the transfer portal as crazy as it is, nobody knows how good a team will or will not be. Sure, it’s probably a safe bet that Georgia and Ohio State will be top-10 teams, but can anyone predict where Alabama will be after losing their Head Coach and half of the roster? What about Michigan? They also lost their Head Coach and returned only a handful of starters from last year. Will they reload again or be a 6-6 team? Nobody knows.
Case For Preseason Polls Being Good
Many supporters of having a preseason poll claim that everything will work itself out by the end of the season. They point to examples such as TCU, which rose from unranked to the National Championship game a few years ago, all in the same season. They also claim that with a 12-team playoff, this will matter even less since there are now more team openings.
Supporters also point to the fact that the College Football Playoff Committee doesn’t look at the AP or Coaches Poll when making its rankings but rather creates its own rankings independently of everything.
Case Against Preseason Polls
Preseason Narratives
Now more than ever, a team that is 10-2 or even 9-3 will be in the hunt to make the Playoffs, and there are a lot more of those teams than undefeated one-loss teams. Now more than ever, narratives matter, and a huge narrative comes from the Preseason.
Think about it: for the next four to five weeks, teams currently in the Top 10 will get all the attention and press. Like it or not, this creates a narrative that even members of the College Football Committee listen to. So what happens at the end of the season when a 9-3 Notre Dame, who got a ton of press in the preseason, is being compared to a 9-3 Texas Tech, who came out of nowhere and is suddenly sitting with the same record as Notre Dame trying to get the final at-large Playoff spot.
Guess who will get it? 9/10 times, Notre Dame.
Getting Ranked
Again, going back to narratives to an extent, a team in the Top 10 could lose a game in the first three or four weeks of the season and still be ranked. But what about a team that starts the season unranked and loses a game in the first few weeks? They certainly won’t suddenly be ranked. An early-season loss for any non-Top 25 team probably needs to start 6-1 or better to be seriously considered.
That’s how polls work. The only way to get into the poll is at the expense of another team. For a team like BYU to get to the Top 10, they’d realistically probably have to start 8-0. Georiga on the other hand, could go 6-2 and still be in the Top 10 because they started there.
G5 schools, forget about it. They are so far ‘out of sight, out of mind’ that many have to start 6-0 or better ever to be considered for the Top 25.
Again, this all creates a narrative. When it gets to the end of the season, the CFP committee will look at a 9-3 team that spent most of their season in the Top 10 and favor them over a 9-3 team that, until Week 10, wasn’t even ranked.
The Solution to Preseason Polls
There are two solutions to the preseason polls issue:
- Get rid of polls until a few weeks in: This is the most logical choice that many feel is fairer. With so many transfers and coaching changes, giving the voters a few weeks to analyze everything would lead to a more fair ranking. The CFP already does this but waits until the middle of October.
- Keep the same rankings as the year before: Michigan won the National Title, so they should be ranked No. 1 in the 2024 season. Will they be as good as last year? Probably not, but until they prove it otherwise, why are they now being punished with a No. 8 ranking behind teams like Notre Dame and Oregon? This would also create a path for more G5 teams to stay relevant. Liberty finished 25th last year, yet sit unranked this year. Let them have 25 again and move up or down with their performance. Instead, now nobody is thinking or talking about them. The Flames may have to start 5-0 to be ranked again.
