What is inherently true about any poll where subjective judgment ranks the competitors rather than some sort of win/loss, points scored system is that someone is going to get screwed for no other reason than they had a bad previous year or people generally believe that its just their time to get screwed.
In the first couple of weeks, it is customary for wild Wall Street like changes to totally overhaul the preseason rankings. Case in point, UGA was the preseason #1, is a perfect 3-0, and is now ranked #3. The thought process being that we find out who is actually better than who rather than just take the preseason polls as truth and wait for a higher ranked team to lose. A genius system which should ultimately be proved and justified by the Hawaiin shirt wearing boys in Vegas. After all, you'll never get as honest an opinion of a team, biases and karmatic gestures aside, as you will with cash on the line.
Enter the Florida State Seminoles. Florida State finished last year 7-6 (4-4 in the ACC) and lost the Music City Bowl to Kentucky in what would be Andre Woodson's farewell performance. Nothing to write home about but not quite Duke either. So far this year they've vanquished two Southern Conference foes, Western Carolina and Chattanooga, in their first two games by a combined score of 115-7. For their less than overwhelming trouble they are 24th in the AP and 25th in the USA Today Poll. A cursory glance in the direction of the Southern College Football Poll will point out that the Criminoles haven't quite found their way into any of the 30 pollster's top 16, but then only 26 teams have. So now they face Wake Forest, 18 in the AP, 18 in the USA Today, and most importantly, 18 in the SCFP. Like their cross conference rivals, the Forest is 2-0 having disposed of Baylor and squeaked by Ole Miss. Should be easy, #18 vs. #24-unranked. Would every team who is favored this weekend please step forward? Not so fast, Wake Forest.
FSU by 4. Now I know the game is at home and this generally leads to a 3 point slide towards the boys sleeping in their own beds, seeing the girl from their management class in their own stands, and eating their momma's lasagna the night before the game. I say generally because I can't believe Vanderbilt gives as many as 3 points to be at home and I can't believe the Florida's and LSU's only give 3. I also know that the gamblers dont make the polls, but in some instances they should!
Next we have Ole Miss (2-1) vs. Vandy (3-0). Ole Miss doesn’t even check the polls and Vanderbilt is 26 in the AP and close to creeping in the top 25 for the first time since Ronald Reagan ran for re-election. So what’s the line? Ole Miss by 6.5. There is no reason in the world that an unranked (and by a longshot at that) team has any business of being favored by a touchdown over the #26 team in the nation. Good God, any BCS conference team that finds itself a touchdown dog to Ole Miss should be reevaluating the state of the program, not looking to burst into the national spotlight.
See also UNC favored by 1.5 over Virginia Tech. While this is more understandable as the game is in Chapel Hill, it still reeks of the fact that the money is the only entity that could conceive of the idea that UNC could be favored to beat Virginia Tech in a football game.
What I’d love to see is the emergence of a Vegas Poll. The idea being that those with only a financial interest in the games might be slightly more objective than the guy who watches the ESPN night game, catches highlights from around the nation, and roots on his alma mater. The Vegas Poll should take into account each team’s added point value for a home game and then prohibit any underdog from having a higher ranking than the favorite. For instance, the FSU and Ole Miss lines would be capped at whatever the home field advantage point value is. A sports book should have far more objectivity and honesty than a guy who grew up rooting for the Irish or believes that you haven't won a real road game unless it happened east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon line. Maybe then some of these oddities would even out.
0 comments:
Post a Comment