What's with the polling system anyway?

(No, I'm not a FSU fan.)

Why the heck do we let the polls dictate who is the best college football team in the nation? If we let polls dictate everything in life, we may as well just inaugurate Obama to president now. I mean c'mon!

My little rant this week goes out to the outlandish slide from potential BCS buster to has been status of our beloved BYU football team by the BCS powers that be this past week. As a fan of the team, I certainly enjoyed the 7 and 8 rankings the team was receiving week after week, but as a realist, I knew we weren't that good. We were unproven, untested, and consequently, over valued in the polling. Again, why do polls mean anything? BYU didn't deserve a 7 ranking (even before getting wiped out by a superiorly better prepared TCU team) but they also aren't so bad they are only good enough to be ranked 21.

We don't have rankings for the NFL, the NBA, or any other major sport. What do we have? A playoff system. Tell me how its fair that unfair competition in the NCAA rewards a team for beating a bunch of pancakes just to have a chance to dance with the big boys. The original BCS Buster University of Utah team would have likely steamrolled any team in the nation that year. The next to bust the door was that Boise State team that shocked the world and beat Oklahoma. But all that did was open the door for a team from Hawaii to score an unimaginable amount of points last season only to get rolled in their "reward" game. And then this year, BYU was rolling through their own pancakes (despite a nailbiter in Washington) and were thusly rewarded with an over-inflated ranking. (We'll leave the discussion of the UW penalty as well as "playing the teams on your schedule" for another day because I could go one forever with those.)

Tell me how its fair that TCU beats BYU, could likely go to Rice-Eccles next month and lose, then watch BYU roll into Rice-Eccles and beat the Utes while we all sit back and watch Boise State roll through a miserable conference once again and get rewarded with a BCS game they will get destroyed in? Can you honestly tell me you think BSU is better than any of those three teams in the MWC?


(FCS already has a playoff system, so it seems to me that it works.)


Its high time the NCAA did away with polls and instituted a playoff system. In the major league sports, the top team from each division (and sometimes the next best team as well) regardless of strength of the division get to head to the playoffs. That is when the weak teams are exposed for who they are. I'm sorry, but if you are only the 5th best team in your division, you don't deserve to play in the post season. Yes, I think the MWC gets a perennial slap in the face each time we have to match up against Oregon or UCLA in the Vegas Bowl.

Play a playoff system and let the teams land where they may.