Every season, the AP releases an official preseason ranking built entirely on preseason hype, assumptions about new freshmen and transfers, coaching changes, and momentum, or lack thereof, from the previous season. Not a single snap has been played when the rankings are released.
To be clear, I understand that the main driver behind these rankings is the same driver behind just about anything these days: money. It would be much more difficult to pitch an exciting slate of Week 1 games without the ability to advertise “#3 Texas at #1 Ohio State.” Preseason and early-season rankings create more opportunities to showcase top-five matchups, top-10 matchups, ranked matchups, and so on. I’m certain ESPN would rather shut down operations than give up the ability to leverage rankings.
Additionally, if these rankings were unofficial, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. Our site, ESPN, Fox Sports, Josh Pate, and anyone else can release their own rankings without issue. The difference is that my personal rankings won’t ever appear on the score bug of a live game, crediting Alabama with the #7 ranking. My personal rankings are also unlikely to influence the playoff committee. The AP’s rankings, however, are absolutely official, and despite any effort not to let them affect the committee, the likelihood that the committee is entirely unaffected by the progression of the rankings during the season is low.
There are plenty of things people don’t like about the College Football Playoff Committee, and I agree with many of those frustrations. One thing I give the committee credit for is that it doesn’t release a ranking until the last part of the season, usually around Week 10. Will the committee still rank teams incorrectly? Absolutely. But in theory, it has roughly nine performances from each team to evaluate. Not only does the committee have more evidence to work with because it didn’t start in Week 1, but it also doesn’t have any early rankings to feel tied to.
Don’t misunderstand this rant as me saying that I could more accurately guess, before the season starts, which teams will be good and which ones won’t. I will eventually put out my own rankings, and we can collectively mock how poor my predictions turn out. The point is that I don’t think anyone can get a reliable gauge on the upcoming season. The only possible outcome is that the rankings are incorrect to start and continue to lead us astray throughout the season, as teams are given credit for wins that seem impressive but later prove to be pedestrian. On the flip side, a team could beat an unranked opponent early on, both teams could turn out to be elite, and it could take most of the season for that team to get credit for a quality win.
Let’s look at the 2014 season. Texas A&M was ranked 21st in the preseason rankings, and South Carolina was ranked 9th. In Week 1, Texas A&M traveled to Columbia as a 9.5-point underdog to take on Steve Spurrier and the Gamecocks. A&M dominated South Carolina from start to finish, winning 52-28. The AP voters jumped A&M to #9 in the next week’s ranking after the Aggies thoroughly beat the voters’ previously ranked #9 team. Hindsight is 20-20, but that South Carolina team went on to finish 6-6 in the regular season. Not exactly the #9 team in the country. However, A&M still received credit for a win over the #9 team. After four straightforward wins over Lamar (6-4 in FCS), Rice (7-5 in G5), SMU (0-11 in G5), and Arkansas (6-6 in the SEC), A&M was 5-0 and ranked #6 in the country. Spoiler alert: A&M was not the sixth-best team in the country. Over its next seven games, A&M went 2-5. One of those wins came against 4-8 UL Monroe out of the Sun Belt Conference, by a score of 21-16. The losses included a 17-point loss to Mississippi State, a 15-point loss to Ole Miss, a 59-0 dismantling by Alabama, and losses to Missouri and LSU. That left A&M with a 7-5 regular season after once being considered the #6 team in the country.
Not to pick on A&M, but Mississippi State was the team that handed A&M its first loss, 48-31, and that dominant win helped fuel Mississippi State’s run to claim the #1 spot for a portion of the year. Despite Mississippi State not being the best team in college football, it was still a genuinely good team. However, it’s unlikely Mississippi State would have reached #1 at all without the help of what was, at the time, an impressive win over #6.
In 2014 alone, at least two teams ranked inside the top 10 struggled to secure a .500 regular season. Had A&M or South Carolina simply been decent teams, rather than top-10 teams, that would have been one thing. But missing that badly is another.
Take this past season as one last example. LSU started at #9 and went on the road to face #4 Clemson. LSU won and jumped to #3. Clemson started the year 1-3, including a 34-21 home loss to Syracuse, which finished 3-9. Did this sudden nosedive by Clemson cause the AP voters to rethink their ranking of LSU? Of course not! It didn’t occur to the voters to drop LSU until the Tigers lost four of five games after a 4-0 start. The voters gave LSU a ton of credit for its win over Clemson, but they never thought to re-evaluate that result, or how good LSU was, until LSU fell off a cliff itself.
The last thing I will say: the AP voters are individuals with entirely different criteria for how they evaluate teams. Some use wins and losses to rule the day, while others use an eye test. Some have publicly admitted “it doesn’t really matter” and phone in their votes. Voters often seem to believe a team can’t jump too high or fall too low after one result, so a team is essentially trapped by a voter’s previous ranking.
Early-season rankings are the worst. Very little good comes from them. Will I still obsess over them? Likely. Will I rant continuously about the rankings? You bet. That’s half the fun. Check back in next year for my yearly ramblings about preseason rankings.