The latest college football polls are out and now it's time to rip them to shreds. Senior college basketball writer Gary Parrish has been calling out voters in the major hoops polls for thinking a little bit too far outside of the box when it comes to their AP ballots every week.
With the football season starting, I thought I'd steal take the baton on the idea from my colleague and keep all of the writers across the country who vote honest. I've come to know a good number of these people through time and twitter but relationships do not matter, bad votes do.
AP Poll Coaches Poll
(Details of AP ballots courtesy of PollSpeak.com)
Poll reactions: ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC
Rodney Dangerfield "No respect" team of the week: Georgia Tech
Paul Johnson's team is undefeated and the triple option is humming down in Atlanta so far this season. The Yellow Jackets are ranked 21st in both polls and beat a solid North Carolina team this past weekend. They have been rolling over their competition with the number one offense in college football, a key component of which is actually the passing game with receiver Stephen Hill looking a bit like Calvin Johnson. The Tar Heels were the toughest team they have faced so far and they were able to move the ball on the defense so it's not like anybody is arguing they're a top 10 teams. The schedule is very manageable going forward and they should be a few spots higher than they are, perhaps ahead of one-loss TCU and directional school-playing Michigan. Four voters left the Yellow Jackets off their ballots. It's probably a little bit of a reach for Kyle Ringo to have them at 14 this week too.Overrated: South Carolina
Four interceptions. That's how many quarterback Stephen Garcia threw against Vanderbilt on Saturday. Thankfully the Commodores couldn't move the ball at all against the Gamecocks' defense which, along with running back Marcus Lattimore, are the only reasons why South Carolina is currently undefeated. Currently sitting at 10th in the AP Poll and 9th in the coach, Steve Spurrier's ball club needs to look a little better if they're to live up to their ranking. My colleague Tony Barnhart said it best in his column Monday: Here is South Carolina's reality: It is overrated as the No. 10 team in the nation and is living on borrowed time. The Gamecocks will be favored at home in their next two games against Auburn and Kentucky. But then Spurrier takes his team on the road to Mississippi State, Tennessee and Arkansas.
California Craziness
A trio of voters from California (CSN Bay Area/CBSSports.com's Ray Ratto, San Jose Mercury News' Jon Wilner, LA Daily News' Scott Wolf) are an interesting voting block. Some would call them progressive, others would call them extreme and just about everybody else will call them crazy given their fluctuations in their ballots each week. All three are consistently in Pollspeak's group of "extreme voters" so we'll highlight the most baffling decision(s) out of each.
Mr. Wolf finally decides to send in a ballot worse than his peers from the great state of California. He's the only voter to rank Navy and is one of two to rank Auburn, which he has 19th despite having one of the worst defenses in college football. Despite going on the road and beating a top 10 team at the time, Oklahoma State finds itself 15th. Apparently one of the best offenses in college football and a quarterback who has never lost on the road is not enough to be a top 10 team according to Wolf. He also ranked Nebraska 5th and has West Virginia, Oregon and South Florida ahead of Wisconsin. So... um... yeah, not so much.What were you thinking? Coaches Poll and Colley Matrix Poll
First off, before getting into the BCS mess, we have to call out the coaches/sports information directors who vote for moving Stanford ahead of Boise State despite the Cardinal being off this week and the Broncos rolling Tulsa. Really, there's no excuses for such things. A big thanks to Peter Burns for bring up the Colley Matrix Poll to us on Twitter. You can view the entire poll here. Colley Matrix is one of the polls that make up the BCS computer rankings and frankly, judging by where they have some teams ranked right now, that's very concerning. Of course there's Michigan being ranked #1 but that's not as big of a head scratcher as LSU not having any top 25 wins. Not sure how Texas is 10th or Illinois 7th either. Louisiana-Lafayette is also in the top 25 so there's that too.Team bias
Our tech team at CBSSports.com is pretty awesome and came up with this neat tool to take a look at team and region bias in the AP Poll. Check it out below, it's a fun thing to play around with.
