I have so many other things I want to write posts about - not the least of which is in regards to the article about CourtVision I've recently read, or the series of articles about coaching defense. But this is something I need to post about, so here it is.
Pre-season polls for NCAA basketball and football need to stop. Its a pointless and ultimately damaging item that would be better served being eliminated. This is a purely emotional post, I'm not going back and looking at old polls or anything like that. But I think - intuitively - that I am right about this.
The solution is simple. We need to suspend voting and polls until a certain percentage of the season has passed, let's say 25%, or a certain number of weeks (four is a solid number for me). The advantages are compelling:
1. Restrict teams from relying on expectations for a ranking. Performance trumps potential.
2. Force teams to play tougher schedules. Some schools would be a bad example (like UNC basketball, which played MSU to start the season), but we have a number of schools who schedule marginal out of conference (or worse) opponents. Syracuse basketball is a good example of this. If any program wants a top 10 ranking, you better go out and beat some good teams. Who wouldn't want the Orange to travel to Creighton to prove their worth early in the season?
3. Permits schools with smaller budgets to create a stronger resume when it comes time for the post-season (bowls or tournament). Ohio University from the MAC was 24-7 before the NCAA tournament. 13th ranked Michigan (who they beat) was 24-9, yet Ohio would have had no shot at an at-large bid had they had not won their conference tournament.
4. Prevents schools who have exceptional seasons from being forced to climb the ladder and fall short. The examples here are too numerous to count. If you are not a major college program who starts the season in the top 25 you can pretty much forget about a chance at a BCS National Championship. Basketball is more forgiving here, with a longer season and more games, but the challenge is daunting.
In summary, the thing that bugs me here is that we are using the off-season to determine a team's worth, and those polls can affect rankings for months or an entire season. Its a lot like a draft prospects value increasing (or decreasing!) during workouts, instead of focusing on how they played.
How can a system like that be good?
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