College Football Rankings: Are Voters Finally Coming to Their Senses?

College football has long been plagued with controversy and question marks when it comes to rankings.

Preseason rankings have helped to determine BCS games, with little attention paid to the actual outcomes on the field of play.

Without piling on Boise State too much, they have been undeserving of the past rankings given to them. 

Sorry, Bronco fans, but 12-0 in the WAC or MWC should not automatically qualify you for a BCS bowl.

Now, a glimmer of hope as college football voters seem to be coming to their senses.

Though we are only four weeks into this college football season, we have already seen voters using their brains when ranking the top five.

In Week 1, when LSU beat Oregon and Alabama beat Kent State, voters rewarded the Tigers by jumping them above Alabama. 

The following week, when the tables were turned with the Crimson Tide beating a ranked Penn State team and the Tigers taking a break from their grueling schedule with a game against Northwestern State, the voters reversed the ranking and gave Bama the No. 2 ranking.

In Week 3, Bama played a virtual no-name in North Texas while the Tigers played ranked in-conference opponent Mississippi State, and voters rewarded LSU by again jumping them over Bama in the rankings.

College football fans—this is how things should work.

A team like LSU, who had five ranked opponents on their conference schedule, should be rewarded for scheduling two additional ranked opponents in their non-conference schedule.

Conversely, a team like Boise State, who has one ranked conference opponent, should have to prove themselves by playing ranked out-of-conference opponents rather than riding an easy schedule and high preseason ranking to a BCS game.

And yes, I know, Bronco fans—they can only play the schedule in front of them. 

That’s fine.

But that schedule is NOT deserving of a BCS appearance.

If you want to play for national championships, stop crying and move to a legitimate conference.

As far as the voting goes, ESPN’s Robert Smith put it best when he said that voters should “throw out their polls from the preseason” and stop trying “to confirm [their] own beliefs from the beginning.”

This is exactly what has to happen to make college football a legitimately competitive league.

If voters not only threw out preseason rankings, but also threw out the rankings from the previous weeks to an extent and looked solely at the on-field performances of the current week, with the past performances in the back of their minds, college football rankings would be fair and respectable.

I am happy to see that so far in this current college football season, this has been the case.

If this continues, you should see both LSU and Alabama move up and pass Oklahoma in this week’s rankings.

Follow me on Twitter @brettstephen.