I always found the coaches poll weird. First, there's an inherent bias. You'd generally want to rank you and your opponents higher to make it seem like your schedule is tougher. No one's free of bias, but at least media members don't have a direct stake in the voting. Second, no coach actually takes the time to really rank everyone. The whole allure of the coaches poll is because the coaches are insiders. But normally some random dude fills it out. And even if the coach does fill it out, it's not like he has the time to legitly rank everyone. He's basically focusing all his time on one thing, his next opponent. Not who's the 4th best team in some conference he does not play all year.

Polls as a whole are pretty much useless. But I always found it weird how they were so treasured in football (where people threw fits and redesigned the entire BCS formula every time the BCS system did not match the polls) and so irrelevant in basketball (the selection committee always seeds much different than the polls). But if I had to choose one poll, I'd choose a media poll. At least it's the media's job the follow to sport. It's the coaches job to focus on about 11 other teams, not 111.

Didnt the AP leave bowl games out of the final rank to kiss the big tens arse while the coaches poll (UPI) counted the full record ......years ago when it originated.

(09-09-2016 10:08 PM)shere khan Wrote:  Didnt the AP leave bowl games out of the final rank to kiss the big tens arse while the coaches poll (UPI) counted the full record ......years ago when it originated.

No, the Coaches Poll was after the last regular season game from 1950 to 1972, it was only in 1973/74 that it had a final coaches poll after the last bowl game. Since the AP went to after the last bowl game in '68/69, there was only a short period when the last Coaches Poll was finished before the bowl games and the last AP after.

(09-09-2016 01:21 PM)Georgia_Power_Company Wrote:  I like the coaches poll better than the AP. The coaches poll is more like having your work peer reviewed which gives it more credibility to me than some member of the media (often with an adgenda) ranking the teams.

You couldn't be more off. The coaches don't have time to watch the games, not even the assistant coaches. It's basically a poll of sports info directors/athletic directors with the coaches having input and veto power. Honestly, a poll of us Average Joes would be better or at least more accurate, as we actually watch teams and some of us can be unbiased. The coaches, if they even actively think about it, vote for their friends or conference foes often times for them or to make themselves look better. Remember when Steve Spurrier would always vote for Duke in the preseason poll?

I think polls are pretty stupid as a rule. It is hard to believe that in 2016 public opinion polls still play an enormous role in who wins a national championship.

The playoff has improved things in that regard but they also have a long way to go.

I don't think the coaches or the media are very well informed on a week-to-week basis.

Why does any poll still exist. It is just the opinion of a bunch of boobs.

Well, the CFP selection poll is still the opinion of "boobs", but it does count for something.

I also like the methodology of that poll, though. Going through an iterative, ranked choice process, rather than just listing your top 25.

(09-10-2016 06:34 AM)goodknightfl Wrote:  Why does any poll still exist. It is just the opinion of a bunch of boobs.

This.

Sadly not having a poll (or something similar) is going to be hard to get away from and not just tradition. College football has way too many teams and not enough games to get an accurate picture so we are not going to get a ranking from records alone. Further since the playoff is not all inclusive we force ourselves to have to consider things other than just standings in conferences unlike in say the NFL. That is how basketball sort of gets around this since the polls are not as important and the autobids partially nullify the situation (though with the loss of the regular season champ getting in the autobid is less representative of quality that it was). If that was not enough even if you go with some computer model people are never actually pleased with it as it rarely actually fits what people think the rankings should be.

In the end you will not be happy with any of it so you really just end up choosing your poison.