Rankings Rant

Let's take a look at the Top 25, and everything that's wrong with it...


First off, you won't hear any complaints from this blogger about the Top 5. However, if I had one, it's that Boise State and Bama are ranked too low. Yeah, you read that right. Guess I should explain...

The Top 5 teams in college football have currently played a grand total of 2 ranked teams. Not just currently ranked teams, ranked teams period. (If you really want to stretch it, LSU played Washington who managed to get ranked, then promptly flamed out) #17 Miami has played 3 ranked teams, and beat two of them! Miami has one loss (to current #6 Virginia Tech) and yet they're in the bottom half of the poll. Florida has played nobody, yet they sit atop the poll because they are the defending national champions. I agree that they should be ranked, and ranked highly, but they have not proven themselves to be the best team in the country, especially with that pedestrian performance against Tennessee.

If rankings are supposed to prove who can beat whom, then Boise and Bama need to be higher.

Moving down the poll, I'm not entirely sure how Southern Cal vaulted back up into the #7 slot. They got beaten by Washington, fell to 12, then jumped up 4 spots for Penn State, Cal, Ole Miss, and Miami's losses. My question is simple: Why did they leapfrog Oklahoma to move up 5 spots? OU's loss came earlier (traditionally meaning they should be ranked higher until they lose again) against a team that was ranked, unlike USC's loss. Plus, BYU is still ranked, unlike Washington. It doesn't make any sense to me to see the Trojans above the Sooners, but I guess that's why I'm not a voter.

Cincinnati is in the Top 10 for the first time in school history. This is fairly meaningless, but I guess it's good for the Big East to have a Top 10 team. They certainly don't deserve it, since they've played no one, and I doubt they could beat the 110 teams ranked below them, but since they have an incredibly weak schedule, there's a real chance they could wind up with a BCS bid before it's all said and done.

Houston is ranked too low for my tastes. They beat the then-#5 team in the country, are undefeated, and are still ranked below Oklahoma, who was beaten by the then-#20 team in the country. How's that work?

Iowa should probably be ranked higher as well. They, Kansas, and Michigan are the lowest-ranked undefeated teams. The reason Iowa should be ranked higher? Because they beat #5, unlike Kansas and Michigan who have played a gaggle of nobodies.

Question: Why did Miami fall so hard? They got badly beaten, yes, but they also beat 2 ranked schools. Their hard fall teaches schools the wrong lesson: They shouldn't schedule hard teams because losing leads to low rankings. Even if they go undefeated from here on out, I doubt that Miami will make the National Championship game because of 1 Saturday in September.

Nothing else too egregious in the Top 25 this week, we'll wait for next week...