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lol, nice way to end the discussion. What do you think about your aggies moving to the SEC?

From what I read, the SEC has changed their mind since they are realizing that the current system benefits them greatly...especially if the 2 teams only in the BCS is lifted....then the SEC bias in the preseason polls will allow for more SEC teams to make BCS bowls. I mean, South Carolina is ranked number 10 in the country....for the love of what is holy how do you lose your best offensive player and your QB and still get a top 10 ranking without beating anyone worth mentioning after it happened?????

I'm not sure where you read that and to this point, a quick google search finds nothing at all to substantiate that. I highly doubt the SEC is backing off of the plus-one format, though.

As far as the pre-season polls, puh-leeze. They're stupid all around, but by the end of the season, teams that lose drop and it generally works out. But as far as South Carolina goes, their most recent game was a 3-TD blowout of the ACC champions, who are currently also ranked in the top 15 of the country. If you consider *that* as beating nobody, perhaps you would like to point out what teams that are below the 'cocks that should be ranked higher and point out what they've done?

Who has Arkansas beat to deserve their ranking? You never answered that because there are only 2 teams with winning records that they have beat. You think Arkansas would have won the big 12? That's laughable. Usually the number 6 team in the country has actually done something. In fact, OSU has a better wins resume than any team in the SEC other than LSU. Yes they lost to ISU, bad loss, but who has Bama proven their worth against? Arkansas that's it. You can try to count Penn State but come on... When the best thing on your resume is a loss, that is a bit ridiculous.

You are an A&M fan, you know first hand how bad the preseason rankings are.

As for OU, if you would have read my post it said that now #19 is about right, but not for most of the season.

You talk about computers, but those "non-biased" computers take into consideration the rankings of the teams when they compute their data. Some of those computers take into consideration the rank of the team at the time that the game is played and some take the final rank of the team played at the end of the season. The input data has to come from somewhere.

Do you even look at other conferences when you type this stuff? Penn State, while admittedly known for a lot more disgusting things right now, did end up tied for the (lol) "Leaders" Division in the Original Big Can't Count.

We can all play this game.Who has Kansas State beaten to deserve their ranking? There's only one team at all that is anything above mediocre that they've beaten, and that's a one-point win against Baylor.

Which Big Can't Count? (There are 2 you know)

Penn State would have only had 2 losses if we hadn't fired our 60+ year coach less than a week before the game,

Which Big Can't Count? (There are 2 you know)

Penn State would have only had 2 losses if we hadn't fired our 60+ year coach less than a week before the game,

That's why I said "Original" -- the Big Ten++ hasn't been able to count for a long time, while the Big XII-- is the new mathematically challenged conference.

As far as firing the coach, yeah, that likely didn't help the final record. On the other hand, him turning a blind eye to a former staff member teaching "proper shower technique" (the latest of the stupid things to come from his attorneys' mouth), it's a foregone conclusion that he needed to be fired. But Penn State will be back and hopefully get back to doing it the right way.

Lot of good stuff here. Since the last posts are more recent, anyone commenting on the name and number of teams in the Big 10 and Big 12 clearly knows little about college football. College football is about tradition, so that speaks for itself as to why they obviously have not changed their name. As for why the Pac 10 decided to change it, dont know, but probably because they have a tradition too...of losing!

Anyhow, about the preseason rankings, let me say this. Most all of you are understating its importance, and LRR might be overstating it a bit. To say preseason rankings mean nothing is pretty ridiculous. Take a simple analysis that is irrefutable. Team A is ranked 1st to start the season....they lose. They move behind the other reputable zero-loss teams until every other team has lost. Who is in first once every team has lost? The team that started the season ranked higher.

You can say, to a point that by the end of the season this is rectified, but it really is not. Very rarely do 2 undefeated teams play in the BCS title game, an very rarely are there only 2 teams in the country with 0 or 1 loss. So invariably you will have teams who share the same amount of losses. When this happens, the team who started the season higher is ranked higher almost every time. Even when a team stays undefeated longer than every other team, once they lose, they drop behind the other teams (see OkSt).

Preseason polls affect future rankings for the first six weeks, maybe eight. After this, the sample size is big enough to rank teams on merit instead of preconceived strength of the team. Oklahoma St. finished 3rd because they lost to Iowa State, plain and simple. If they lose to OU, Texas, or Kansas St., they're playing in the national championship game. I don't think many voters wanted to see a rematch, but championship-caliber teams don't lose to the Iowa States of the FBS.

End of season rankings are based on records, quality wins or lack thereof, recent games, and quality of conference/strength of schedule. I'm sure the order in which voters choose to rank these characteristics vary from voter to voter. I'm also sure that very few, if any, voters care about the preseason rank of a team when voting at the end of the season.

The above applies to the rest of your post as well. We can argue 'til we're blue in the face about the merits of teams ranked 7-20, but at the end of the day each of them has their strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure individual voting would show a large difference in rankings of teams in this range.

At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that a plus-one or playoff format is needed so we don't have to sit through another national championship game like the one we'll have this year. It's a lose-lose for everyone involved, except Alabama of course.

While the sample size may be large enough to rank teams based on merit, it does not happen. OkSt lost in OT, while Alabama lost at home in regulation....

That's a very good point. Well, at least, it would be, except that of course Alabama lost in OT as well. But other than that small detail, it's very good indeed. ;)

Voters may not consciously take preseason rankings into their decisions, but polls pretty much work as a ladder, and as such knowingly or not, the voters rank them such as that. I think a lot of stuff points to pre-season rankings mattering a lot. What say you when 3 teams are undefeated....? Voters rarely if ever lower a team that does not lose. So what you think the voters would look at the 3 teams seasons as a whole and make some informed judgement? I dont, I think they would do what they do every season.

You mean like this season, when the top four in the preseason (AP) were: Oklahoma, Alabama, Oregon, LSU? But, wait, week 2 had Oklahoma, LSU, Alabama. Week 3 was Oklahoma, Alabama, LSU. Week 4 was Oklahoma, LSU, Alabama. Week five was LSU, Oklahoma, Alabama. Weeks 6-8 were LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma. All three were still undefeated, all three had been ranked 1, 2 and 3. So the thought that teams never get lowered if they don't lose fails that test right there.

Of course, the motion in the coach's poll wasn't as dramatic, and Oklahoma never entirely fell out of #1, though their margin fell to 11 points. Alabama and LSU did still flip, though, and there were plenty of other flips early in the season - just looking at Boise State, they passed Stanford in week 2, FSU in week 3, and then got passed by Stanford in week 5, and Wisconsin in week 6 (who also leaped ahead of OkSt that week).

Heck, just last year Florida was ranked #4/#3 (AP/Coaches) in the preseason and by week 2, was ranked 10/7 (at 2-0). Even after going 4-0, they were #7 in both polls -- seems a far cry from teams keeping their spot automatically. In the past four years in the coaches poll, an undefeated team has dropped in rank 36 times.

I would even argue, at least as of recently, more correcting of the pre-season rankings happen early rather than late. If you look at first few weeks this season, you will see some teams who won but dropped a bit in the rankings. Simply put you do not see that towards the end of the season, you just dont.

I wish I had read this before the last few paragraphs. ;)

In the final coaches' poll, Nebraska, Penn State and Florida State dropped despite not playing; West Virginia won and dropped. There's more movement in the AP poll, of course, as they actually seem to take it more seriously. But I'm confused -- if you think the polls should measure the full body of work of the season, wouldn't it make a lot more sense for there to be less movement late? By the last weeks of the season, you've got a pretty solid body of work for each team and can evaluate them fairly well, so the late games shouldn't change the evaluation that dramatically. Early on, of course, the preseason rankings are going to be compared with the performance on the field and you'll see more volatility.

lol, nice way to end the discussion. What do you think about your aggies moving to the SEC?

I don't like it.

The move to the SEC was done for two reasons:
1. money
2. the Longhorn Network

A&M has always had an inferiority complex stemming from their relationship with that other school in Texas. Realignment became inevitable when Texas signed a contract with ESPN. The powers-that-be at A&M have a huge ego problem and refuse to play second fiddle to any university in the state of Texas.

From a competitive standpoint, A&M will do fine in all sports except football, although I think they'll eventually be able to compete. Personally, I hate the idea of mega-conferences as they ruin decades-old rivalries and create matchups that make no geographical sense. The sport that's really going to suffer though is basketball. Every conference was much more interesting before their recent additions. The part of all this realignment that really kills me is the dissolution of the Big East. Watching the battle royale that takes place in this conference during the months of January and February is the highlight of my sports year, March Madness excluded.

As Red said, it's all about the money. And the higher ups get away with it because we the fans will never stop watching.