The Flaw With The NCAA Ranking System

Everyone loves college football. The excitement is unrivaled by any other sport because of the fact that if a team loses one game, its quest for a national title is essentially over. While many people love college football, everyone has their own complaints about the game. Most of these complaints have to do with the BCS system and the NCAA’s lack of a playoff. My complaint is about the rankings, but it is different than everyone else’s.

College football needs to withhold the rankings until week 4 or 5. There is no point to the preseason rankings and the rankings after the early weeks. Most major college football teams start off their schedule with schools that no one has heard of. They use their non-conference schedule to line up games against cupcake teams that they can embarrass and use to work on plays in a live situation rather than practice. Going into week 3 or 4 of the season, most teams have not proven anything and are somewhat undeserving of their ranking. This year’s preseason top 25 looked like this.

AP Top 25
RK	TEAM	RECORD	PTS
1	Florida (58)	0-0	1498
2	Texas (2)	0-0	1424
3	Oklahoma	0-0	1370
4	USC	0-0	1313
5	Alabama	0-0	1156
6	Ohio State	0-0	1113
7	Virginia Tech	0-0	1054
8	Mississippi	0-0	1047
9	Oklahoma State	0-0	989
9	Penn State	0-0	989
11	LSU	0-0	914
12	California	0-0	746
13	Georgia	0-0	714
14	Boise State	0-0	659
15	Georgia Tech	0-0	593
16	Oregon	0-0	587
17	TCU	0-0	521
18	Florida State	0-0	307
19	Utah	0-0	289
20	Brigham Young	0-0	267
21	North Carolina	0-0	261
22	Iowa	0-0	229
23	Notre Dame	0-0	225
24	Nebraska	0-0	207
25	Kansas	0-0	134

Of the original top 25 teams, 12 have already lost a game. After 3 weeks of the season, 4 top 5 teams have already lost. This shows that some of these teams were not worthy of their rankings.

Ole Miss was ranked number 4 in the country headed into last night’s game, but why? They were 2-0 with wins against Memphis and Southeastern Louisiana. So what?

On the other hand, we have a Miami team that beat Florida State on the road and followed that up with a win against Georgia Tech.

One team beats a team from conference USA and the Southland Conference, while another team beats 2 ACC teams. If you look at these two early resumes, there is no doubt as to who is the better team. The problem is the preseason rankings.

Because Ole Miss was ranked higher by the “experts” to start the year, they have the advantage. If college football would wait a couple weeks before ranking the teams, it would force college football teams to prove something on the field, rather than maintaining a ranking that they probably don’t deserve.