by Vinny Porco

Pretend it’s the middle of August. If you’re somebody who watches sports as one of their primary forms of entertainment, you’re in limbo.

Tennis, golf and baseball just don’t fill the void of football and basketball. Once that buzzer sounds in the last game of the NBA Finals, a lot of us start looking around. For some, it’s earlier than that.

But it’s the middle of August, and guess what? The AP Top 25 college football preseason rankings are out!

Texas sits atop the list at number one with Arch Manning at the helm. Penn State looks to make a big splash with a boatload of returning production. Clemson looks poised to have a stranglehold over the ACC.

Now fast forward two months.

Texas is the only one of those teams still ranked and that rests almost exclusively on one win against Oklahoma.

This isn’t right. And granted, it’s okay to be wrong. Ask Colin Cowherd, who notably still has a job.

I’m not suggesting that AP voters should be required to have a crystal ball. No, I’m questioning whether or not there should be rankings so early on at all.

You might be thinking, “Big deal! That’s why they post every week. It’s refined throughout the season.”

You’d be partially correct to say that, but for people with neckbeards like myself, there is a concept called “poll inertia” in college rankings.

The idea is that teams that are high in the early rankings are not punished enough for losses, and teams that are low or unranked are not rewarded enough for wins.

And who does this phenomenon benefit? It benefits the two conferences that hung the moon of course!  SEC and Big Ten teams disproportionately start and stay in the rankings, oftentimes because they were ranked highly to begin with in the preseason.

This issue is further compounded by conference play. There are few things that bolster a team more than an SEC schedule.

It’s the reason a subpar LSU team is still ranked, even though their signature early wins against Clemson and Florida have aged like milk.

Dropping them more than ten spots would be extreme! Who cares that they have no offense?  After all, they’re playing an SEC schedule, toiling against teams like the South Carolina Gamecocks that peaked at tenth in the country despite doing absolutely nothing.

In the Big Ten, gawk no further than sixth-ranked Oregon, a team that has only shown an ability to bully impressively bad Big Ten teams.

This bias can oftentimes put a ceiling on the potential of teams from other conferences. 

I’m not going to tell you that the ACC is getting pimped. You would click off this article.

But the Big 12 deserves better. Teams like BYU, Texas Tech, Cincinnati and Houston all have arguably better resumes than Oregon, but don’t get the respect they deserve.

And sure, SEC and Big Ten teams are almost always the ones we see holding that trophy at the end of the season, but that’s not a good enough reason to allow lower and middle-tier teams to ride those coattails.

There has also often been reason to question the authority of several of the 62 AP Poll voters.

Reporter Haley Sawyer representing the Southern California News Group bumped up the Florida Gators two spots in her rankings submission after a loss to USF earlier in the season.

There should simply not be rankings until the College Football Playoff Committee makes their calls at the end of the year.

Leave it up to a better group of people at a better time.

Not having an AP Poll during the season and preseason would allow the Selection Committee to make nuanced decisions based on a more holistic view of the college football season.

Drop the smoke and mirrors, and the best teams will be there at the end of the year.

But it will never happen.

I don’t mean to sound defeatist in my outlook, but this issue will likely never see change. And of course, money is always the “why” of it all.

For one, that little number next to team names on promotional material creates buzz. “Did you see fourth ranked Clemson is playing ninth ranked LSU?”

On top of this, there’s a deeper problem endemic in society. People hunger and thirst for content.

Sports fans are sitting on their couches or at their dreaded desk jobs in late summer looking for something. It used to be the weekly Sports Illustrated or the morning paper. 

Now it’s multiple hourly articles and social media posts, farming ad revenue for every click and brief catch of an eye. 

I’ll leave you with this. Engagement feeds the beast.

So next time you see some outrageous poll on your feed, just let the wind take it.

Featured Image / Vinny Porco