Pointless Polling

Pre-season polls are downright pointless, especially in college football because they can mean so much at the end of the year BCS bowl choices. While it's great for overhyping teams and giving the media more material to work with, it generally proves to be inaccurate, as we saw this past weekend with Michigan at No. 5 and FSU at No. 19. Most importantly, if a team is not ranked highly early on, it can haunt them later in the year despite having a great season on the field.

This argument has been made before, but why not let the teams play 3 or 4 weeks of football and then start making some decisions on who belongs where? With all the turnover in player personnel from year to year from graduation, transfers, early entries to the draft, and new freshman recruits, this would allow for the teams to be slotted appropriately according to the effort and performance on the field, instead of on paper.

Seems easy to change, right?

Not if the media conglomerates have a say. ESPN, Sports Illustrated, conferences and all the other large, and not-so-large sports news outlets, utilize these mostly unfounded rankings to hype up their shows, periodicals, and other pre-season elements. It allows everyone to speculate and be an "expert" before the season.

Like ranking draft or recruiting classes when they first happen instead of after the players start performing, nobody really knows until the teams get on the field. But like many flaws in the system, pre-season polls will continue to be the norm rather than the exception.