Rankings are stupid

[shakes3858]

I was going to come up with a Michigan is a good team thread (save your comments on that statement for later. I'll give you the chance). Part of the premise of my argument will be Utah is pretty damn good. It got me looking at the rankings. How is Utah ranked 10?

What has Utah done this year?
They beat Michigan which few thought they would be any good.
They beat Utah State and Fresno State... Ok whatever wins
They dominated #13 Oregon 62-20.

On the other hand, MSU is #2. What have they done?
The beat directional Michigan.
They barely beat #7 Oregon
They beat a fine Air Force team.
And then another directional Michigan.

Why is MSU 2? Because they started at 5. The voters assumed that Oregon was some great team so MSU needed a bump. Now that Oregon was destroyed by Utah, that win isn't as good. But MSU moved up... all the way to 2. On the other hand, Utah started at 30 and beat an unranked Michigan team that nobody thought was going to be good. But Michigan is a ranked team now (again, save the comments on Michigan for that thread). Oregon wasn't a top ten team when Oregon played them. Why should a close win give MSU more credit than a blowout win for Utah against the same team? Can anyone tell me Utah's body of work this season is not as good as MSU's? If you watch the two teams play, can you really tell me that Utah is the worse team between the two? If you're not going off of watching the games and you're not going off of body of work, what are you going off of?

STUPID.

 

[villox]

Aaand this is why they moved to a committee for the playoffs. It's also why they didn't even bother releasing BCS rankings until several weeks into the season.

 

[Hungry Jack]

Just use Sagarin, which has:
Utah at 14
NU at 27
MSU at 28

 

[shakes3858]

Aaand this is why they moved to a committee for the playoffs. It's also why they didn't even bother releasing BCS rankings until several weeks into the season.

Do you want to get me started on "the committee" and the whole idea of a "playoff?" I think they proved last year their voting habits are swayed by "reputation" and not on the field performance.

 

[villox]

Do you want to get me started on "the committee" and the whole idea of a "playoff?" I think they proved last year their voting habits are swayed by "reputation" and not on the field performance.

Yes.

Who did you think should not have been in the playoff last year?

 

[Alaskawildkat]

It is amazing though that the preconceived bias has not been helping our SEC friends as much as usual in at least the top of the rankings. Undefeated Indiana certainly deserves a spot down at the bottom of the rankings though over some of the SEC teams with a loss that are still in the rankings just because of the preconceived bias/preseason placement.

 

[Deeringfish]

The rankings will have slightly more merit after a week of conference play where teams in lesser conferences can begin to compare apples to apples and in stronger conferences can begin to compare Oranges to oranges. Our date with Minny is a good example.
In the end the rankings are total guess work until about week 8 is complete.

 

[shakes3858]

Yes.

Who did you think should not have been in the playoff last year?

I would've left out Ohio State and put TCU in. The fact that they one the damn thing proves my point that trying to get as many games as possible in there doesn't work. OSU was insanely healthy last year. That's why they were able to run over beat up defenses in Wisconsin, Alabama, and Oregon. They lost to Va Tech by 14 at home. That's an unforgivable loss. TCU lost to Baylor on the road by 3. That's a far more forgivable. But they idea that we're debating what loss was the most forgivable is asinine.

 

[SmellyCat]

I love rankings of things (not just football), as they provide endless amusement, argument, and discussion.

They're also stupid for the reasons you state.

I can only hope that teams that keep winning keep rising to the top and teams that lose don't, but the committee is still going to be swayed by a shiny "4" next to a team and think twice before putting in the #5 ahead of them. Which defeats the purpose of having the committee.


We're stuck with it for now, so for now I'll be excited that my favorite team is ranked 16th.

 

[KramerCat91]

The coaches and AP polls are pretty terrible. People can't really process the volume of information necessary to do a good job especially when they don't have a lot of reason to do so.

 

[Sheffielder]

100% agree the rankings are stupid, especially the coaches since we all acknowledge that coaches aren't watching games and the uber-political nature of conference pride...but they are still what steer the media coverage and CFB thrives on debate. Honestly, if more objective polls gained momentum, it would probably kill the sport.

 

[StreamCat]

Honestly, if more objective polls gained momentum, it would probably kill the sport.

How?

 

[phatcat]

I would've left out Ohio State and put TCU in. The fact that they one the damn thing proves my point that trying to get as many games as possible in there doesn't work. OSU was insanely healthy last year. That's why they were able to run over beat up defenses in Wisconsin, Alabama, and Oregon. They lost to Va Tech by 14 at home. That's an unforgivable loss. TCU lost to Baylor on the road by 3. That's a far more forgivable. But they idea that we're debating what loss was the most forgivable is asinine.

and yet the baylor team that lost by only 3 to TCU coughed up a hairball to MSU and lost. You can go round and round with this.

 

[shakes3858]

The coaches and AP polls are pretty terrible. People can't really process the volume of information necessary to do a good job especially when they don't have a lot of reason to do so.

Coaches are honor bound to take their coaching poll voting duties seriously. This was my favorite Feli line!!!!

 

[FeliSilvestris]

100% agree the rankings are stupid, especially the coaches since we all acknowledge that coaches aren't watching games and the uber-political nature of conference pride...but they are still what steer the media coverage and CFB thrives on debate.

You can trash the rankings all you want...but as discussed in another thread, when you look at the on-field results, you find that generally speaking the higher-ranked team wins....of course there are exceptions....they are called "upsets"....but if upsets were the rule and not the exception no one would notice them...rather it would be big news when the higher ranked team wins.... a linked article reports a study by a Stanford PhD that looked at many recent bowl games and concluded that the PRESEASON coaches poll does actually quite good, just a hair below the "betting market" in predicting the winner...and keep in mind that bowl games tend to match teams of comparable strength (at least on paper)...predicting the winner among evenly matched opponents is not so easy.