BCS Rankings: No More West Coast Bias: AP Voters Aren't Watching the Pac-12

Somewhere during the 2011 season, traditional sports logic and college football reasoning has been lost between the AP Top 25 and the USA Today coaches' poll.

The final regular season polls released Sunday show that the “experts” fans look to for football guidance might be drawing names out of a hat to pick their Top 25.

Week 15, the final week of the regular season, should have been the easiest week of the season for voters to fill out their Top 25 polls.

Only 22 games were played during the weekend, meaning that out of the 120 FBS teams, only 44 were in action.

Eleven games featured ranked teams, five of which featured two ranked teams playing against each other.

Sixteen teams were ranked in the week 14 AP poll. Of them, five lost.

Three of the five ranked teams that lost were “upset” by lower-ranked teams. No ranked team lost to an unranked team.

Traditionally, this would mean that three ranked teams would drop in the polls, and the three previously lower-ranked teams would move up.

Teams on a bye would have the opportunity to jump teams playing one extra conference championship game, right?

Guess again, college football fans.

In week 14, Stanford was No. 4, Oregon was No. 8, and USC was No. 9 in the AP.

The AP was so impressed with Stanford and USC’s bye that in the final polls they kept Stanford at No. 4, jumped USC to No. 5, and placed Oregon at No. 6.

Voters rendered Oregon’s Pac-12 championship game win over UCLA useless.

Voters may have forgotten that Oregon beat Stanford on November 12 (just four weeks ago), 53-30 at Stanford Stadium.

The following week, USC went on the road and upset the Ducks at Autzen Stadium, 38-35.

One can see an argument being made for USC being a Top 10 team. They have quality wins over Oregon and—Notre Dame?

USC’s two losses have been to unranked 6-6 Arizona State, 43-22, and to No. 4 Stanford, 56-48. The Trojans' last regular-season game was a victory over UCLA, 50-0.

Are the AP voters telling America that they're more impressed with USC’s 50-point win over UCLA than Oregon’s 49-31 win over UCLA in the Pac-12 championship game?

Yes, they are. 

They're also telling college football fans that two teams in the Pac-12 are better than the team representing the conference in the Rose Bowl. 

According to the AP, Stanford's quality win over USC, Oregon's quality win over Stanford, and USC's quality win over Oregon are enough to rank the teams 4—5—6 in the final regular season poll.

None of the teams have quality non-conference victories to help support their positions.

Oregon played four ranked teams during the season, and finished with a 2-2 record against them. One of the ranked teams the Ducks beat was Arizona State, who finished the season unranked with a 6-6 record.

To look at it another way, the Ducks went 1-2 against quality opponents during the 2011 season.

Stanford also played four ranked teams during the season. Two of them, 7-5 Washington and 8-4 Notre Dame, are unranked in the final AP poll.

Stanford went 1-1 against quality opponents during the 2011 season, with a win over USC and a loss to Oregon.

USC played two ranked teams and finished with a 1-1 record, losing to Stanford and beating Oregon.

Don’t look for wisdom with the USA Today coaches’ poll, because there's no more logic in it than in the AP.

Due to the fact that USC can't participate in postseason games due to NCAA sanctions, the coaches' poll has completely left USC off the ballot.

USC is deserving of a place among the top 25 teams in the nation.

Where they deserve to be ranked is up for debate. But leaving them off the ballot entirely is essentially saying the team doesn't exist.

Yet when USC beat then-No. 4 Oregon on November 19, the coaches dropped Oregon to No. 9 the following week.

Strange how Oregon can drop in their poll to a team that does not officially exist to them.

Luckily, the AP Poll doesn't count towards the BCS rankings. Although, you'd have to fool yourself to think that the Harris Interactive Poll is not influenced by the AP Poll in some way.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott has to be happy that three of his teams occupy top-10 spots, but Scott and Ducks head coach Chip Kelly have to be angry that voters have made a joke out of the Pac-12 championship game, by jumping USC ahead of Oregon.  

Through it all, fans have to realize that the so-called college football “experts” do not know as much about college football as we have traditionally given them credit for.