What do you get for benching a senior quarterback who had totaled 4,813 yards and 35 touchdowns during his sophomore and junior years, and starting an inexperienced backup who threw seven interceptions last season alone?
A No. 5 ranking, apparently.
Mack Brown, head football coach at Texas, was given that ranking by the Associated Press in its preseason poll that was released way back in August. This was before any of the teams on the list had even played a game.
Also puzzling is how Chris Simms, that inexperienced backup, was named a preseason Heisman favorite.
Major Applewhite, the poor sap yanked by Brown this year, has sat idly on the sidelines, watching what used to be his team being run by a shaky Simms. Texas’ superb defense kept the Longhorns in the game against Oklahoma three Saturdays ago. But Simms’ poor day resulted in a grand total of three points.
Let’s face it: College football hype is going too far.
Predictions are fun, and Texas is clearly a great team, Simms or no Simms. But these preseason polls are beginning to cloud up the college football world. They demand too much guesswork, too much conditional voting and too many what-ifs. They create unnecessary “favorites” and “underdogs” in games between unproven teams.
Worst of all, they’re all dead wrong.
Let’s take another look at this season’s preseason AP poll. Of the top five teams, only three remained among the top five in this week’s Top 25. Florida, the preseason No. 1, lost on Oct. 13 to Auburn, a team that barely beat lowly Louisiana Tech the next week.
Oregon State was ranked No. 11 in the preseason poll; currently the Beavers are 2-4 and unranked.
Louisiana State was ranked No. 14; they’re no longer ranked. Notre Dame (3-3) was thought to be the No. 18 team in the country. UCLA was ranked No. 17; now the unbeaten Bruins are at No. 4. Florida State, which was trounced by then-unranked North Carolina early in the year, started the season at No. 6.
Even Northwestern was mistakenly thought to be among the nation’s best teams. The Cats came in ranked No. 16.
And how about the teams that weren’t ranked at the beginning of the year?
Fresno State, unbeaten until this past weekend and currently No. 18, received a measly six votes in the preseason poll. Maryland didn’t get any votes in the preseason poll — now the Terrapins are No. 9. Stanford, which got eight votes in the preseason poll, is now No. 20, coming off its upset victory at Oregon, a preseason No. 7.
On Monday night, the Bowl Championship Series released its first calculated top-15. This practice is much more sensible than polling before the season. It gives teams time to sort out who’s serious and who’s not. Injuries occur and upsets happen every week in college football.
Most importantly, the good teams show that they’re good, and the bad teams show that they’re bad.
College sports are too volatile for “official” organizations to make hasty predictions that could affect the season, especially when they’re so widely used. A team’s ranking almost always accompanies the school name in newspaper articles or television broadcasts.
Smart players ignore the weekly reminders of how others think of them, but some get wrapped up and allow the rankings to alter their performance.
Football, more than any other sport, renders predictions pointless. In basketball, a championship team is forgiven for, and expected to, lose a game or two. In football, it’s rare that a national champion is crowned after having lost a game. One little slip-up, and there goes the season — not to mention that phantom No. 1 ranking.
Joe Ziomek is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
