Monday Poll Bashin'/Playoff makes too much sense to work

I’d like to send out a public thank you to Dave Wannstedt—purveyor of some of the worst play-calls in college football history—and Bob Stoops for crushing the BCS. Instead of the BCS sneaking by with a miserable Missouri-West Virginia championship game its absurdity will once again be called into question. No less than eight teams have a compelling argument for being included in the championship game. According to playoff detractors like Kirk Herbsreit, though, there is no need for a playoff because the regular season is a playoff. Seriously, can we just stop classifying the two sides as pro-playoff and anti-playoff and just appropriately label them idiots and non-idiots? At least then, we can avoid pretending to have any semblance of a meaningful argument on the issue.

As for the pollsters, I beg you to take pride in your ballots. It’s an insult to the informed college football public when you desecrate the right to vote in a meaningful college football poll. I don’t care who you think should be in the BCS Championship game. You can make arguments—some stronger than others—for any of a number of teams. Six teams received first-place votes in the final AP Poll so there are a lot of differing opinions out there. I have no problem with Ohio St. and LSU in the championship game. I wouldn’t have had a problem with Georgia or Oklahoma, either. However, the people who jumped Oklahoma ahead of four teams that didn’t lose this week are ridiculous. The same goes for LSU. Don’t manipulate your ballot on the last week of the season just to get the team you want to see in the BCS Championship game. LSU didn’t prove anything against Tennessee that we didn’t already know. If you think they should be ranked ahead of Georgia now, then you should’ve had them ranked ahead of Georgia last week. Stop voting for teams you don’t really believe to be ranked as high as you have them. If you think LSU is better than Georgia, then vote that way—and not just on the last day of the season. If you think Oklahoma is better than Kansas, then vote that way. Don’t vote the opposite until it counts and then switch everything around. That tells me that many voters take no pride whatsoever in their ballots until the last week of the season. That’s garbage.

I have just one complaint this week but I think it sums up the overall incompetence of the polls…

Missouri/Kansas/Oklahoma

I like Oklahoma. I think the Sooners are a pretty good football team. In fact, I think it’s possible that they are one of the top two teams in the country. However, the only reason Oklahoma is ranked #3 right now is because the pollsters didn’t do their jobs. The fact that the pollsters allowed Missouri to be ranked #1 in the country is one of the dumbest examples of mass stupidity that I’ve ever seen. Missouri had played against one elite opponent this season—Oklahoma—and promptly lost by 10. Missouri beat Kansas in the most ridiculous #1 vs. #2 showdown in college football history. Kansas hadn’t beaten a single team that could even be classified as remotely good this season and still hasn’t. So, that leaves us with Oklahoma’s resume incredibly inflated simply because the pollsters didn’t appropriately rank Missouri and Kansas along the way. Records are meaningless by themselves. There are 30 teams in college football who would’ve been 11-1 with the same schedule as Kansas or Missouri. Equally absurd is the fact that Missouri and Kansas are still ranked #7 and #8 respectively in both polls despite having proven only to be better than a bunch of mediocre teams. The most absurd, though, is that Kansas received an at-large BCS bid and Missouri didn’t. Missouri is ranked ahead of Kansas in the polls. Missouri is ranked ahead of Kansas in the computers. And, Missouri beat Kansas. That is truly unbelievable. There is a fair amount of ambiguity right now but the vast majority of it is because the pollsters did such a terrible job of using any semblance of logic throughout the season. Only in college football can you get a group of 125 “experts” to vote for Georgia ahead of LSU, and Kansas ahead of Oklahoma when nobody really thinks that to be true. I hate the polls. I hate the BCS. They have ruined college football.