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Mike Hall's Bio: Mike Hall does it all: He anchors "Big Ten Tonight," reports from sidelines during Big Ten games and serves as host of the Friday Night Tailgate. He also blogs right here and posts his very own video reports. |
| Sep 29 2009, 2:34 PM | Topic: Campus chatter |
| So we're four weeks into the season and the AP poll stats are glaring. Ten teams ranked in the top 10 have already lost. Five teams ranked in the Top 5 have already lost. And of course, because we live in a media world where too frequently having an opinion is more important than having a thoughtful opinion, pundits are clamoring that something is deadly wrong with college football. No. The latest claim is nothing we haven't heard before: There should not be preseason polls. Well that's a silly point of view. Having polls early in the season is a great thing for the sport of college football. Because it leads to upsets. And more importantly, dramatic upsets. If South Carolina beat Ole Miss last Thursday, you might have cared. But when South Carolina beat fourth-ranked Ole Miss, you definitely cared! If you're like me and a big fan of college football, then you probably were either sending or receiving texts when that game went into the fourth quarter to say "A Top 5 team is goin' down!" If there wasn't a ranking in September, would you really have cared on a Thursday night that an SEC team was beating another SEC team? Most likely not. But the reason people are worried about early season polls is that it can be hard for teams to move around once someone has already determined where you rank. And historically it has at times been proven that a team that starts the season poorly ranked or not ranked at all will have a harder time rising to the top spot than a team ranked in the preseason Top 10. Although often the specific argument usually goes to Auburn in 2004. Some say Auburn was forever stuck behind USC and Texas because they were ranked behind them in the preseason poll and could never jump them. I disagree. Auburn never moved ahead of those two because of Auburn's horribly weak non-conference schedule. They played Louisiana Monroe (5-6 in the Sun Belt Conference in 2004), the Citadel (3-7 in the Southern Conference) and Louisiana Tech (6-6 in the WAC). They had no one to blame but themselves. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater by eliminating early polls. There's an easy way to fix it. It all relies on the voters. They have to be flexible. Too many voters want to make their ballot look like what they predicted would happen before the season began. That's a very human thing to do. That's also unprofessional. One may not have thought Houston was any good to begin the season. But one has to think they are now! But that leads us to the other issue, which is an age-old argument: Are you voting based on what you've seen or what you think? This argument drives me nuts. And I've had some great debates about this with very informed and experienced analysts who disagree with me. My stance is this: Do you want me to tell you which team is better based on the results of what has happened? Or do you want me to tell you which team is better based on what I think might happen if there were a hypothetical meeting on a neutral field? How could you possibly go with option B?! Surprising situations happen all the time in sports. That's what makes sports so great. Whether it's as big as Texas over USC in the Rose Bowl, or as recent as Iowa over Penn State in Beaver Stadium, how many people thought those upsets would happen? Very few. But they did. That's what makes hypothetical assumptions so silly. So why would we base our decisions off of that many unprovens! Here's how I would do my ballot. I would examine everything week by week. For example, in the fourth week I determine which team has proven to be the best from those past four weeks. Now, that may be very different after the fifth week. It will certainly be different after the thirteenth week. And that's the point. No team owns the top spot. Team A may have the best resume and best claim to be No. 1 after a month but if they don't beat any good teams from then on, or if Team B beats more good teams than Team A by the end of the year, then Team B has proven to be more deserving of the top spot. Let me go through a hypothetical. Is Florida really the best team in the land right now? The polls say so but what have they done? They are 4-0. Three of their wins were very impressive. But the teams they've beaten? Charleston Southern (1-3), Troy (2-2), Tennessee (2-2) and Kentucky (2-1), and three of those wins came at Florida. That's a combined opponent record of 7-8. I have a hard time saying through four weeks they have proven to be the best team in the country. Now, they still have games at LSU, against Georgia and Florida State, amongst others. So as those wins trickle in and assuming they stay undefeated, they may turn out to be the best team in the land. However, the only reason you'd have them ranked in the top spot right now is because you'd be basing it off that hypothetical situation we just addressed. Which is bad. But for right now - RIGHT NOW - after four weeks, how can you say Florida is better than, say, Cincinnati? The Bearcats are 4-0. They have two pretty tough road wins (vs. 3-1 Rutgers and 2-2 Oregon State) and two wins over teams not quite as good in Fresno State (1-3) and Southeast Missouri State (1-3). As of right now, is the Bearscats' resume worse than Florida's? I don't think so. What is so wrong about voting them ahead of Florida right now? And down the line once Florida gets the wins we expect to get that will look better then Cincy's wins, then you move them ahead. What about Alabama? That team is 4-0 right now including wins against Virginia Tech and Arkansas. Shoot, the best argument might reside with Iowa. No one in the country- let alone Florida- has as impressive a win as the Hawkeyes' big one on the road against Big Ten favorite Penn State. Iowa is also 4-0 right now with wins over teams with a combined mark of 12-4! Their wins came against the Big Ten (PSU 3-1), the Pac Ten (Arizona 3-1), the Big 12 (Iowa State 3-1) and the Missouri Valley (Northern Iowa 3-1). Do I think that Iowa will end the season undefeated? No. Do I think they will end the season as the No. 1 team in the land right now? No. Most importantly, does what I think (or what anyone thinks) might happen hypothetically months from now matter? No. What matters is "the right now." And right now, after four weeks, Iowa has been more impressive than Florida. To recap: Early polls are good because they generate interest in college football in the month of September. Voters ought to cast their ballot based on what teams have accomplished, not based on some mythical hypothetical. And voters should be flexible on their ballots from week to week. There. Now all of college football's regular season's troubles are solved. Onto the Middle East. FINAL NUGGET: "Tailgate" is in West Lafayette this week. Gene Keady will be the Alumni Interview. Got this tweet from someone following Friday's show, "Who is this Jordan guy? That whole ET speech was nothing but banter. Let's talk football guys." I won't say his name 'cause I don't want to embarrass him, but ... dude, c'mon. That was the fifth segment of our fourth show of the season in our third year of doing Tailgate. And you're honestly not yet realizing this isn't an X's and O's breakdown show?! I think we can allow the network 90 minutes a week to do something different. There are 9,990 minutes remaining in the network's weekly schedule devoted to the Cover Two and the Badgers' second-string right guard. Although, now that I think about it. There's always a good chance that was Jordan's dad who wrote in. Which would then make sense. |
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