Written by Gene Zarnick
| 17 September 2009
Why does college football have rankings? I continually ask myself that question every week because unlike any other sport, at the end of the year, the rankings don’t really matter. It seems as sports fans we need rankings for debate’s sake or to help us determine if an upcoming game is important or not. Our culture is one that needs to get analysis over and over from everyone possible to try and tell us the outcome a week before the game started. Why can’t we just wait and watch the game? I don’t need a number next to a team’s name to tell me if the game is a big game. All rankings do for college football is cause conflict and make people more upset there’s no playoff system. At least in college basketball if you’re in the Top 25 then you know you’ll be guaranteed a spot in the NCAA Tournament and they can somewhat help decide seeds for the tournament. In college football it just gives us a fake sense of importance on how good a team is or how big a game will be.
So if we’re smart enough as sports fans to decide on what teams are good and what teams aren’t then do we really need rankings? I don’t think sports fans need rankings, I don’t think sports radio needs rankings, and I don’t think web sites or sports blogs need rankings. We can create our own. We can debate on merit and what we’ve seen, not on a number that some coach who didn’t watch any games or some writer who is biased towards a specific conference deems as a team’s rank. If they want to rank teams then why can’t we decide? Why should I care that Urban Meyer thinks Alabama is the second best team in the nation? Can’t I just watch the games all season and then hopefully get to see an undefeated Alabama team face off against his undefeated Gators in the SEC championship and then determine it then? Of course we can do that and we should be the ones who at the end of the year decides who will be playing for the national championship. I think the nation is smart enough to see who the best teams are and to pick what the best game would be. We don’t need a BCS computer to analyze data from polls, schedules, and stats to tell us who we want to see. If college football doesn’t want to give us a playoff at least they can give us a choice to decide who we want to watch. Plus, by allowing us to decide who to see in the big game, we would be benefiting the television station because they would know more people would pay attention to this game than any other matchup that could’ve happened.
The television stations are the problem though. They are the ones that need rankings. Each week we can watch numerous games pitting two ranked teams together and it’s supposed to tell us that this game will be a big one. How many times do we see one team ranked as the same seed as a different team on different networks? Networks always display the higher seed to make it look like the game is better. They manipulate the rankings in their favor and people fall for the trap week in and week out. I think I know that if two undefeated teams are playing in week five then the game will probably be good. I think I know that if a team is continually looking sharp and beating teams handedly then they are probably good. I think I know that a computer shouldn’t have to tell me what will be the best game at the end of the year. There are a lot of things I think I know, but what I do know is that college football doesn’t need rankings.
