My Biggest Beef With College Football
Football season is right around the corner and I couldn't be more excited. Media outlets are starting to hype the season, the teams, the players. The NFL, with its consistency (i.e.Tom Brady on the same team for 15+ years), seems to be somewhat predictable when it comes to the season's winners and losers.
Yes, there are surprises from year to year, but point is that the team you saw last year will have 80% the same people this year. There isn't as much change as a college team that loses half of its starters to the draft and another 7-8 players to graduation.
The fact that college football has had some dominating teams says a lot about coaching but with such a change in talent from year to year, any team at any time could fail.
This leads to my BIGGEST BEEF WITH COLLEGE FOOTBALL.
Preseason Rankings.
I hate em.
Alabama is ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation for week 1 of the 2017 season. Shocker. But they haven't even played a game. How do we know they are any good? What evidence do we have that the tiny #1 belongs next to their name? NONE. There is no reason yet that they should be seen as the best team in the nation.
Think about it. In the 2017 NFL draft, 19 individuals who played at Alabama last season were drafted. The average Division I team includes 55 players. That means that more than a third of Alabama's team this year is brand new. We've never seen them play college football before. We don't know much about them or how they will fit.
You cannot seriously tell me that with that amount of turnover, that Alabama is FOR SURE the best team in college football...that they already deserve that tiny number by their name.
Sure, it is possible that they will be the best team by the end of the season, when they have proven themselves, but what good does it do to rank teams that haven't even played a snap?
Oh yeah. Money
It is the reason for everything.
When you watch football, what games do you watch? What makes a game intriguing? There are three things that a fan judges the importance of a game on.
#1 The fan's favorite team
#2 Tradition or Rivalry games
#3 Ranked matchups (That little number next to a team name that says they are good enough)
So from a business perspective, what teams are you going to televise to get the best viewership? The teams with the biggest fan base. The Rivalry games. And the games with the little numbers by the team names.
The first week of the season rarely has any rivalry games and in college, fan bases are so widespread. So if there were no preseason rankings, media outlets wouldn't have anything to market. Take last season for example. The biggest game of the first week of play in college football's 2016 season was #1 Alabama vs #20 USC. Two ranked teams. So they are good right? Should be a good game? Even a close game.
Nope.
Alabama won 52-6. Sure, maybe Alabama was the #1 team in the nation. But was USC a top 20 team at that point? Probably not. They got better as the season went on but at the beginning of the season they didn't deserve that little number by their name.
Also in week 1, #3 Oklahoma faced off against #15 Houston. If rankings were true to talent, Oklahoma should win, right?
Nope.
Houston by 10. Then why weren't they ranked higher than Oklahoma before?
I know, I know. Upsets happen. That's a thing and I do recognize it but really, what was it about Oklahoma that made them the #3 team in the nation at that point? What is it about that USC team that got demolished as the #20 team that brings them back this year in the preseason but now as the #4 team? I think they proved last year that they can't be trusted with a preseason ranking.
But who does?
The answer is easy. No one.
No team deserves to be ranked before a snap has been played. It is a marketing ploy. A good one. But let's not be hasty to judge a team by its past...especially when so many players are often left in the past.
Yes, there are surprises from year to year, but point is that the team you saw last year will have 80% the same people this year. There isn't as much change as a college team that loses half of its starters to the draft and another 7-8 players to graduation.
The fact that college football has had some dominating teams says a lot about coaching but with such a change in talent from year to year, any team at any time could fail.
This leads to my BIGGEST BEEF WITH COLLEGE FOOTBALL.
Preseason Rankings.
I hate em.
Alabama is ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation for week 1 of the 2017 season. Shocker. But they haven't even played a game. How do we know they are any good? What evidence do we have that the tiny #1 belongs next to their name? NONE. There is no reason yet that they should be seen as the best team in the nation.
Think about it. In the 2017 NFL draft, 19 individuals who played at Alabama last season were drafted. The average Division I team includes 55 players. That means that more than a third of Alabama's team this year is brand new. We've never seen them play college football before. We don't know much about them or how they will fit.
You cannot seriously tell me that with that amount of turnover, that Alabama is FOR SURE the best team in college football...that they already deserve that tiny number by their name.
Sure, it is possible that they will be the best team by the end of the season, when they have proven themselves, but what good does it do to rank teams that haven't even played a snap?
Oh yeah. Money
It is the reason for everything.
When you watch football, what games do you watch? What makes a game intriguing? There are three things that a fan judges the importance of a game on.
#1 The fan's favorite team
#2 Tradition or Rivalry games
#3 Ranked matchups (That little number next to a team name that says they are good enough)
So from a business perspective, what teams are you going to televise to get the best viewership? The teams with the biggest fan base. The Rivalry games. And the games with the little numbers by the team names.
The first week of the season rarely has any rivalry games and in college, fan bases are so widespread. So if there were no preseason rankings, media outlets wouldn't have anything to market. Take last season for example. The biggest game of the first week of play in college football's 2016 season was #1 Alabama vs #20 USC. Two ranked teams. So they are good right? Should be a good game? Even a close game.
Nope.
Alabama won 52-6. Sure, maybe Alabama was the #1 team in the nation. But was USC a top 20 team at that point? Probably not. They got better as the season went on but at the beginning of the season they didn't deserve that little number by their name.
Also in week 1, #3 Oklahoma faced off against #15 Houston. If rankings were true to talent, Oklahoma should win, right?
Nope.
Houston by 10. Then why weren't they ranked higher than Oklahoma before?
I know, I know. Upsets happen. That's a thing and I do recognize it but really, what was it about Oklahoma that made them the #3 team in the nation at that point? What is it about that USC team that got demolished as the #20 team that brings them back this year in the preseason but now as the #4 team? I think they proved last year that they can't be trusted with a preseason ranking.
But who does?
The answer is easy. No one.
No team deserves to be ranked before a snap has been played. It is a marketing ploy. A good one. But let's not be hasty to judge a team by its past...especially when so many players are often left in the past.
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