In their "The Hot Topic" segment on College Football Countdown (on ABC), Craig James and Doug Flutie were bemoaning the early season polls, especially the current ranking of Louisville ahead of Kentucky.
I'll tackle the Kentucky v. Louisville issue first. It was a close game at Kentucky. I'm not sure how many points the home team usually receives for a home-field advantage, but I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that if the game had been played at Louisville, the Cardinals would have prevailed. Obviously, if Louisville can't pull out a home victory over winless Syracuse, it won't much matter ... Louisville won't be in the top 25 come Monday.
The one that really struck me was Arkansas (ranked #16) dropping out of the polls after losing on the road in the last seconds to unranked Alabama. Alabama moved up to #16. Arkansas almost won on the road against the #16 team ... don't they deserve to be in the top 25? Again, by the numbers, you would probably predict that Arkansas would have won if it had been in Fayetteville instead of in Tuscaloosa. Right?
Flutie and James want the team that wins to be on top. Oh, great ... that's going to be real effective in the long run. Last year, Oklahoma beat A&M (at A&M), A&M took down Texas (at Texas) and OU lost to UT (in Dallas). Ok, OU should be ranked ahead of A&M which should be ranked ahead of UT. But wait, Texas has to be ranked ahead of OU because they beat them on a neutral site. It's only fair. Hopefully, you can see this strategy breaking down fairly quickly. The same thing happened in the Big East with Louisville, WVU and Rutgers last year as well.
I don't disagree with people ranking Kentucky ahead of Louisville, but I also don't have a major problem with the way it is. It's important to react to how the season plays out and not be locked to your pre-season ballot, but it's also important to look not just at the latest result but the way the game played out and the team's previous games as well. For example, anyone who thought Oregon should be ranked ahead of Oklahoma after the Sooners got ducked by the refs in Eugene last year because of that particular result id delusional.
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