The House Rock Built is hosting the first blogpoll roundtable of the season. I hate having to think this much. Especially coming out of the weekend.
1. What’s the biggest ripoff in this preseason poll? Either pick a team that’s offensively over or underrated, or you can rag on a particular voter’s bad pick (hey, we’re all adults here, we can handle it).
Florida State is definitely still coasting on its rep the way Nebraska did in the past. What is it about their team or their recent performance that justifies them being any higher than #20?
Honestly, I’m not going to bother ripping on a particular ballot because I just don’t have the energy to look through individual ballots to find egregious bias (other than to point out that 2 of the most self-servingly biased voters were PSU bloggers. Stunning, I know.
2. What shold a preseason poll measure? Specifically, should it be a predictor of end-of-season standing (meaning that a team’s schedule should be taken into account when determining a ranking), or should it merely be a barometer of talent/hype/expectations?
I don’t know. I suspect we kind of mix things to fit our perceptions and justify things when in doubt. I think expectations are the best way to put it since it is sufficiently vague to mix expectations with all the tangible measuring points (schedule strength, talent and such).
3. What is your biggest stretch in your preseason ballot? That is to say, which team has the best chance of making you look like an idiot for overrating them?
That’s easy, since everyone has told me the answer. Oregon at #10.
4. What do you see as the biggest flaw in the polling system (both wire service and blogpolling)? Is polling an integral part of the great game of college football, or is it an outdated system that needs to be replaced? If you say the latter, enlighten us with your new plan.
In the “real” polls it’s the pretending by coaches and writers that they are unbiased and fair. They aren’t there are biases based on the teams and conferences they cover or play within. That’s actually secondary to the lack of transparency. Some sports writers are willing to disclose their votes, but most don’t. Coaches hate even disclosing the final poll. Hell, this sort of stuff has been hashed and re-hashed plenty so I’m not going to go back into it. Ultimately the polls should just be a rough measuring tool. Not the determination for who plays for the national championship.
It depends on what you mean. I like polls. We all do to some extent as an estimation and kind of perception thing — to see which teams people think of as being top teams. Power polls of some form or another are popular and easy shorthand. Even in professional sports you see sports media organizations producing polls to judge which teams are believed to be the best by people.
5. You’re Scott Bakula, and you have the opportunity to “Quantum Leap” back in time and change any single moment in your team’s history. It can be a play on the field, a hiring decision, or your school’s founders deciding to build the campus in Northern Indiana, of all godforsaken places. What do you do?
Hmm. An intriguing wish. Hiring decisions seem the most obvious to me. There are a couple decisions I considered. There was the hiring of Paul Hackett full time as head coach. Something I’m sure USC bloggers might agree whole-heartedly for themselves. I also thought about the hiring of J. Dennis O’Connor as Chancellor in 1991. A man who had no interest in athletics and who’s apathy to that aspect nearly destroyed the football and basketball programs.
Actually, though, and this may surprise some who haven’t read me as long. It was Pitt’s decision to stay in the Big East over helping form an Eastern Athletic Conference with Penn State and Joe Paterno in the early ’80s followed by not advocating on behalf of Penn State to join the Big East after that plan failed. Whether we like it or not, the whole Big East-BCS fears and concerns and stability would not be issues if Penn State was a part of the conference.
PSU insisted on sharing only a small portion of football revenue with the rest of the Big East, while JoePa was fine with more even revenue sharing of b-ball revenues. Schools that derived more money from b-ball than football saw that as inherently unfair – Syracuse in particular. If JoePa’s plan had been implemented, the Big East would have simply added so-so to inferior b-ball teams [like Rutgers, WVU, Army, Navy] to split the pie even further, with very little benefit football wise (since as independents, Syracuse, BC and Pitt were already keeping 100% of their football revenue). B-ball conferences back then were not mega-conferences, so the creation of a football conference would have almost required a break with the excellent b-ball only teams of the BigEast. Also, none of the football teams had any choice but to keep playing each other in football, since just about every major team in the northeast was an independent, and just about every other team in the rest of the country was locked into a conference.
The demise of independent football programs was not on anyone’s radar screen back in the early ’80s. Pitt’s problem then (and now) was the relative lack of support for its football program by alumni and fans (PSU is a much larger school, thus WAY more alumni). If we had known that the Big10 would consider becoming the Big11, and that we would lose our longtime rival in the process, we certainly would have adjusted our position accordingly.
I just re-read the linked post from 2005.
Right on point, except for a couple of things: I’m pretty sure VaTech and Miami were not part of JoePa’s equation back in the early 80’s – VaTech was on par with East Carolina back then, and FSU was more of a power than Miami (which exploded later in the 80’s into a national team-we-all-love-to-hate). Maryland certainly was in the mix – PSU always played and defeated Maryland, so it was natural for them to be included in a JoePa-centric dream league.
And while Pitt’s invitation to the NCAA tourney in 1984 was something that hadn’t happened in a while, Pitt did make it to the Elite 8 in 1973 – only 11 years prior, not 20. Pitt had become a better b-ball program than PSU prior to Pitt joining the BigEast.
Also, JoePa tried to get into the BigEast BEFORE Pitt was admitted, not just after. Syracuse blocked them both times.
I\’m aware that PSU tried to get into the BE before Pitt was invited in \’81 (joining in \’82). In fact the BE had to decide which one to invite. I thought I wrote that originally. Syracuse was the main force to push for Pitt over PSU, and blocking PSU from joining later. Pitt, though, did nothing to help PSU join — staying essentially neutral.
That\’s all fine. But you are wrong about the demise of independent football programs not being forseen. When Paterno/PSU tried to join the BE in the mid-80s Paterno did recognize the value of a conference affiliation for football post-NCAA TV litigation.
You know I hate defending PSU and Paterno, but he did actually show some forward thinking — even if it was all totally self-serving. So was the Big East, in that respect. There\’s a reason why Providence retains any relevance and that was the self-serving interest of Dave Gavitt (the coach then AD of Providence, then the founder and first commish of the BE).
See you Thursday night.
