I agree, the polls are a joke and when the playoff selection committee unveils their first official rankings they will show how silly some of the AP rankings are, and you'll hear a lot of talking heads in the sports media say, "wow, the playoff committee sees things a lot differently than the AP voters," and they will pretend they really aren't sure why there's a difference, but everyone should know why by now:
The playoff committee ranks teams the right way, the AP doesn't.
The playoff committee rules mandate that they come up with each week's rankings from scratch. In other words, regardless of how they ranked each team the week before they throw those rankings out the window and rank each team on their body of work up to the current week. In contrast, most AP voters rank teams based on how they had them ranked the week before. That's a stupid way to rank teams but it's how it's always been done so they keep doing it. So, those AP voters who had LSU in their top 25 at the beginning of the year kept them in the top 25 even after they got blown out by Miss St., and because Miss St. blew out LSU, those same voters said, "wow, look at what Miss St. did to a ranked LSU," so they gave Miss St. a big bump in the polls. Fast forward a few weeks later and it's obvious neither team ever belonged in the top 25 but most of those voters still can't get over that fact. And, of course, it doesn't stop there. Since the AP had UM ranked 7 last week they kept them ahead of MSU even though both teams only have 1 loss and MSU just beat them at UM. Why? Because they wrongly think, "if I had UM ranked 7 last week how can I justify having them tumble too far? And if I didn't have MSU ranked how can I justify having them make a big leap into the top 25?" The playoff committee doesn't do it this way. They look at each teams record, their best win, whether or not they met head to head, and a few other data points to determine how each team should be ranked that week. As the data changes week to week, their rankings change. If the data changes significantly so will their rankings. Most AP voters can't bring themselves to do that even though it makes the most sense. Does anyone believe that if there had been no rankings before this week and this was the first week AP voters ranked teams that they'd have Penn St. ahead of Georgia? Who has PSU beaten? And there is no way they'd have UM ahead of MSU. What's UM's best win? Florida? How does that win look now? And wasn't UF down 10 players in that game anyway?
I haven't always agreed with playoff committee's rankings but I do agree with their overall methodology for assigning rankings and they always do better than the AP. The good news is the AP rankings really don't matter. The playoff committee's rankings will be the only rankings that matter and as long as we keep taking care of business I have confidence they will rank us right where we should be.
