Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I think there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll.
I think there is no way that Michael Jordan stepped away from the game he loved in his prime to pick up a sport he didn’t know or play.
Follow Clark Goble on Twitter!
But the most active conspiracy out there is the one facing the non-BCS quality football programs: the Utahs, the Boise States and the TCUs.
There’s no Zapruder film, but the evidence is in the preseason polls. Pollspeak.com, a website that has logged every week’s college football poll since 1998, did a report comparing the preseason and postseason rankings of every team.
And the results are shocking.
During the BCS era (1998-present), the highest a non-BCS team has ever been ranked in the either preseason poll is No. 14, this year’s Boise State Broncos. And yet, a non-BCS team ended up lower than No. 15 in the postseason poll just once. Non-BCS schools keep exceeding expectations time and time again.
And yet, they continue to be under-ranked.
Take a look at last year’s Utah Utes. Returning a stellar dual-threat QB, Utah looked good in the preseason, but apparently not good enough; they couldn’t crack the Top 25 in either poll.
Then the season started.
Utah took down No. 24 Michigan in the Big House to open the season and didn’t look back. They defeated Oregon State a week after the Beavers toppled USC. They squeaked by No. 11 TCU and destroyed No. 14 BYU. 12 wins. Zero losses.
But they simply couldn’t climb the polls enough.
They defeated two Top-15 opponents at the end of the season and moved up one spot in the BCS standings. One spot. Why? The big dog BCS teams sitting in front of them had a huge leg up because they started the season ranked so high.
I realize Utah simply did not have the talent that Florida or Oklahoma did. But talented teams sometimes don’t win.
And sure, strength of schedule is a factor. However, you can’t grade someone’s strength of schedule in the preseason when no one’s played a game yet.
I’m not sure where the conspiracy lies. All I know is this: teams from non-BCS conferences have no chance to climb their way to the top of the polls. Florida might go undefeated this year, but so could Utah, BYU, TCU, Kansas, Navy or Florida International.
So NCAA, let’s eliminate the preseason polls completely. Put out the first poll in October. We’ll have less to talk about right now, but more to debate later.
Give the smaller programs a fighting chance of achieving their dreams.
— —Edited by Tim Burgess
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