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 Harris Poll BCS
(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(s) of the week: Everyone not in the SEC
Yeah, I said it.
Overrated: Virginia Tech
The coaches/SIDs have the Hokies 4th, the AP has them 6th and they're sitting pretty in the BCS ranked 5th. Everybody was touting this team as a dark horse national title contender in large part because of one thing: weak schedule. If you want to know how a team rises into the top five when their best win is Georgia Tech, you have your answer. The loss to Clemson looks even worse after seeing them humbled by N.C. State on Saturday as well.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.
Wilner finds his way back into this space for putting Oklahoma 8th and Houston 20th. I know the Cougars defense isn't great but they're undefeated so why 20th? Also, Boise State is 13th behind 11th ranked Kansas State. Wilner is the only voter to put Arkansas behind Oklahoma State. I know it's slim pickings but still, Oklahoma 8th?What were you thinking? Keith Sargeant, Gannett NJ Newspapers
There's so much wrong with Sargeant's ballot, it's hard to figure out where to begin. Houston is 4th and Georgia, yes Georgia, is 6th. He also has TCU ranked higher than anybody (10th), Penn State 13th (for beating Ohio State? Ok...) and has USC 17th and Oregon 18th, the lowest out of anybody. Notre Dame is higher than anybody at 19th and Oklahoma falls to 21st. Yikes. Also, Greg Auman of the St. Petersburg Times has Oregon ranked 4th and USC 16th. Not sure how that happened.