We are in a new era of college football. In this era, preseason polls don’t actually matter. Well, sort of. So, before we look at the preseason Coaches’ Poll of the 2015 season, we have to know exactly what it means.
First of all, it is a matter of celebration for all college football fans. It means football season is almost here. We are just over a month away from the start of actual football.
That aside, though, the poll used to actually mean something that we could understand. In the BCS era, we knew that the preseason Coaches’ Poll had direct influence on the future polls as the season goes on. And we knew what the poll meant to the BCS. It meant one-third of the final ranking. Now, though, now things are much different.
We had a year to figure out exactly what the CFP selection committee did. In that season, we learned a lot. At the same time, it’s not clear we learned anything. It seems like they cared about strength of schedule, but that strength of schedule could be arbitrary.
One important thing we did learn, though, was that the committee cared about game-time rankings. Not only that, but Jeff Long accidentally admitted that the committee took into account game-time rankings from early-season polls.
Now (as I explained in the link above), the committee is not allowed to use rankings from polls that use a preseason ranking. So maybe by the time the real rankings matter this season the committee won’t be taking early-season Coaches’ or AP Polls into consideration. But, on the chance that their methods remain the same and, as Jeff Long said, they continue to use these early-season rankings, it behooves us to know exactly what they mean.
One thing we learned about the polls while following the BCS is that not every ranking spot is created equal. Sure, #5 is still #5 and #12 is #12. But the BCS, especially in its later years when it counted number of votes, not poll position, taught us to look for the gaps in the poll. Teams that are closely-bunched together can slide up or down from week-to-week as it takes very minor shifts in perception in the eyes of just a few voters to make a difference. Large gaps, on the other hand, show us where the major breaks are between clusters of teams. Those major breaks usually mean that a team will have a hard time jumping someone in front of them without a major win or an upset of the higher-ranked team.
In this year’s preseason Coaches’ Poll, Ohio State was a near-unanimous #1. This was a bit surprising, as many pundits were touting TCU as the nation’s top team early. The poll was probably always going to have Ohio State at #1 and TCU at #2, but it is more than just a little surprising that TCU couldn’t garner more than one solitary first-place vote (Alabama also received one).
It is very interesting to note how spread out the Top 5 is. The coaches seem to have a clear conception of who belongs in each of those positions. The closest any Top 5 team is to a team ahead of them is #3 Alabama, who is 35 votes behind #2 TCU. What is most surprising about this poll in general, actually, is how widely-spaced just about everyone is. There are a few teams that are close to each other, but there are no real clusters. This could actually make a difference in the first few weeks of the season. In recent years, voters have been much more willing to be more fluid in their rankings early in the season. They would slide teams up and down more just for looking good (or bad) without an actual upset to necessitate poll movement. It is much easier for this to happen, though, when teams are bunched closely together. With everyone as spread out as they are, it will probably take an extremely noteworthy performance (whether positive or negative) to get enough voters to change their minds for the poll can actually be impacted.
Looking through the poll, we can keep an eye out for things that might eventually impact polls later in the season. First of all, the SEC West has five ranked teams with the other two teams sitting at #26 and #27. Thus, any losses within the SEC West won’t carry as much poll weight. We saw a bit of the dangers of this last season, where SEC West teams were not punished by the pollsters for many of their losses and bowl season eventually showed us that many a few of the teams were placed a little higher than they should have been.
The same warning has to be in effect for the Pac 12 South. Four of their six teams are in the poll with Utah sitting close behind at #30. We probably don’t have to worry about Colorado being ranked this year, but the same problem that we could see in the SEC West might also exist in the Pac 12 South. If in-division losses are discounted too much, these divisions could become self-feeding upwards cycles, where our only frames of reference for how good these teams actually are is each other. It is definitely something to keep in mind as the season goes on.
There are always things we can nit-pick on with preseason polls (my personal two right now are that Auburn is a bit too high and Boise State is a bit too low), but the biggest nit-pick of all has to be the fact that the poll exists in the first place. We know that polls are fun. We know that polls drive discussion and interest. But we also know that preseason and early-season polls can cause assumptions that will have ripple effects throughout the entire season. And until the entirety of the college football world admit and accept this, preseason polls do more harm than good. When the CFP selection committee are counting wins over teams that ended up 8-4 as a “Top 10 win”, we know we have a major problem. So, honestly, the most important thing we can learn from these rankings is the willingness to forget them the second we have actual game results to look at.
ARLINGTON, TX – JANUARY 12: A detailed view of the field prior to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game between the Oregon Ducks and the Ohio State Buckeyes at AT&T Stadium on January 12, 2015 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Sarah Glenn/Getty Images)
