Students question the value of NCAA rankings
Is South Florida head coach Skip Holtz complaining about his team's preseason ranking?
College football polls dominate headlines year-round and things were no different this week.
No. 2 Alabama stole the show in the first week of the season with a 41-14 pounding over then-No. 8 ranked Michigan. As a result, the Crimson Tide received 37 first-place votes and bumped preseason No. 1 University of Southern California out from the top spot.
Preseason polls have their fair share of critics. Add University of Minnesota senior Cody Steger to the list.
“In two weeks it’s all going to change,” Steger said. “You see after one week, the top five is completely changed.”
Steger said the preseason polls are only semi-necessary in the sense that they give fans talking points before the season kicks off.
The 2004 USC squad was the last to go wire-to-wire as the top-ranked team and go on to capture the national championship. Of course, the Trojans were forced to vacate that title because of illegal benefits paid to former USC running back Reggie Bush.
Oklahoma, last year’s preseason No. 1, flopped amidst lofty expectations and failed to qualify for a BCS Bowl.
Huey Brim, a junior at the University of Iowa, said he doesn’t put any weight in preseason polls because “a lot of times, teams are losing a lot of players to the NFL.”
While Brim doesn’t see the polls as a necessity, like many in America, the 20-year-old said he loves a good underdog story and the early season polls help create that scenario.
“A team that’s not ranked, watching them come from nothing, can be an astounding story,” Brim said. “There’s no measuring heart.”
As Brim explains, the validity of early-season polls can suffer when teams begin conference play, and because of that, the polls may mean nothing at all.
They’ve already caused their fair share of controversy this season, too.
In mid-August, Trojans head coach Lane Kiffin told reporters he didn’t vote his team No. 1 in USA Today’s poll, when he actually did. Kiffin forfeited his weekly selections when his dishonesty was brought to light.
University of Notre Dame sophomore Andrew Weiler, 20, said being ranked early in the season puts additional pressure on teams to play well.
USC won’t have the pressure of being ranked No. 1 anymore and Trojans quarterback Matt Barkley, for one, is glad. He told ESPN.com earlier this week the top ranking “doesn't mean anything to me.”
"They're very deserving of that, if they're on top," Barkley said of Alabama. “I know they're a great team. Right now, it doesn't mean anything to us.”
On Saturday, the Crimson Tide will host Western Kentucky while the Trojans will do battle with Syracuse.
Sam Gordon is a Fall 2012 Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.