Brian Roastbeef wrote:Dossenator wrote:There should not be a pre season poll...I think most of us agree on that. At this point in the season we should be judging teams on what they have done this year only.
I do agree with that. It leads to a situation similar to golf, where Tiger Woods is still #2 in the world, (only recently lost #1) despite not having won anything in more than a year.
Of course, as Spence illustrated far better than I, how do you replace it? Even if you wait a few weeks into the season, how do you determine that 4-0 Alabama is better than 4-0 Utah? If you say strength of schedule, then how do you determine that Penn St, Arkansas, and Duke are stronger opponents than Pittsburgh, UNLV, and New Mexico? Their common opponent San Jose St. saw similar scores. Alabama beat them 48-3, Utah 56-3. At some point history always gets involved when you have to decide that one team has better players or beat better opposition...
This is the whole rub with trying to rank teams. Using my team as an example - Ohio State typically has a decent team. In 2002 they looked like a team who was just getting by week after week game after game. The first game Ohio State looked good crushing Heisman hopeful Kliff Kingsbury and Texas Tech, then Kent State and Washington. They moved up from 13 in the polls. Then they barely beat Cincinnati, and the rest of the season they looked like they should have lost every game but one. Many people, including me didn't think they had any chance against a great Miami team in the championship game. Most people didn't even believe Ohio State was the best team in the B-10. Just there by a series of lucky breaks and while that series of lucky breaks continued in the championship game it was clear after the first quarter that Ohio State could hang with the Canes.
2006 Ohio State looked like World beaters. They won some close games, but they were against what people thought were good teams. They beat #2 ranked Michigan in one of the better games in the series one day after Bo died. Ohio State was the easy favorite against Florida with their all world kick returner and Heisman QB. Then the Gators completely overpowered and dominated Ohio State in the championship game.
History played a part in both rankings as well as "the body of work". Turns out that the voters underestimated the B-10 in '02 and vastly over-rate the B-10 in '06.
Same thing last year with Oregon. Oregon was a world beating team during the season. Oho State was an a slightly above average team who won a weaker B-10. Except Oregon turned out not as good as advertised. Ohio State wasn't great last year the voters ended up right about Ohio State, but completely wrong about Oregon. My point is sometimes looks can be deceiving. And also history is used to rank teams, at least recent history. The reason that it is used is because we don't have enough information to compare teams fairly. We just don't. We have to look a last years bowl season as a point of reference - which we do, unless it doesn't suit our purposes. Ohio State, after getting smoked two years in a row took it on the chin nationally. Even now those games hurt Ohio State's perception and much as 2002 boosted it unfairly. History is not a good indicator of who is good this year as my examples with Ohio State show, but bowl games is the only frame of reference that lets us see how teams play against their peers, because it almost never happens during the football regular season.
