This past weekend Notre Dame handily defeated a pretty darn good Navy football team. I should know - I was there, and I was never really worried. So after a convincing win over a good team on the road I expected Notre Dame to move up at least 1 spot in the rankings, considering some teams had the week off, others lost, and some others were played pretty close. I was wrong. For the second week in a row, Notre Dame was jumped by a team that did not play after Notre Dame had won. Last week it was Florida, this week California. Once is ignorance, twice is personal...
After Florida jumped the Irish last week head coach Charlie Weis complained about the polls and wondered how a team "home eating cheeseburgers" could jump a team that played and won. That appears to have been a mistake, one for which the pollsters were more than happy to punish him, as the exact same thing occurred this week.
Since arriving in the college ranks Weis has been labeled as arrogant and aloof - that, combined with Notre Dame's reputation as being arrogant and aloof, being an independent, and having their own contract with NBC seems to have created some animosity in the college football world. I posted here a few months back about an article that said many coaches were rooting against Notre Dame in the Penn State game simply so that Weis would get his comeupance from fan-favorite Joe Paterno. Apparently, those coaches and pollsters are now doing what Paterno could not and are taking out their bias in a much more direct manner - via the polls. Folks will say this shouldn't matter because the Irish didn't move positions in the BCS, but remember, the AP and Coaches polls are both part of the BCS equation. If Notre Dame continues to be punished in those polls, it will eventually affect their BCS standing.
I've long been a fan of the college bowl system and the AP and Coaches polls. Mainly because when it got down to it, they were pretty accurate and objective. That is no longer the case. Pollsters are obviously attempting to punish Notre Dame where it hurts most - in the wallet...
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2 comments:
This is a hot-button topic for me. ND is getting screwed - plain and simple. I don't want to hear about all the garbage about how we are overrated, blah blah blah. Let me give you concrete reasons:
1) Ian's example of teams jumping us on BYE weeks despite our winning.
2) ND had the #1 toughest schedule through Week 5. Unfortunately, all anyone talks about is us playing the academies now. Our schedule stands up to everyone else in the country - it just was front-loaded while everyone else played 1AA schools.
3) Of our supposed cupcakes, Navy will go to a bowl, and either Air Force or Army will too (depending on who wins their matchup). The same cannot be said of other teams cupcakes. 1AA teams and pick your bottom of the barrel team in EVERY conference!
4) Notre Dame's only loss was to #2 Michigan, who I think is the best team in the country (above OSU). In every other game, we won. It doesn't matter how, we did. USC had many unimpressive victories, but voters gave them the benefit of the doubt. The reason was always because they kept winning!
5) ND loses to a highly rated Michigan team and plummets to #12 and #13 in the polls. USC loses to unranked Oregon State and they drop, but not nearly as far.
6) There is factual evidence about media and coaches voting ND low intentionally to alter the polls. The reasons are simple. Many media hate ND. Just watch ABC (Saunders, Muskberger, James), CBS (the announcers for the Navy game) or ESPN (May) and that is obvious. They have given ample reason why ND is overrated, and they are some of the people voting! Coaches obviously will rank teams in their own conference higher because it rewards their own team in rankings and in monetary compensation from TV and bowls. An idiot could see the conflict of interest! Also, Google "final 2005 coaches poll" and look for the end of the year poll before the bowls last year. The coaches poll shows how each coach voted. ND was #6 and you see some pretty interesting "outliers" with Spurrier putting us at #14 and other coaches putting us in the teens. Their is no excuse for that.
Anyway, sorry. I had to get that out. I am furious with college football right now. It's at the level of figure skating as far as sports go in my book. A sport decided by judges - who always have their favorites.
By the way, the AP poll no longer figure in the BCS. They pulled out last year.
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