Why are there so many different ranking systems for college football?

get ranking
snarlycharly44 asked:

I mean there is BCS, AP, USA Today, Harris, Computer, why not just one? It is really confusing when a team is more than one ranking. Today, during highlights of the Kansas game, the commentators said they were one rank, then the stats showed another ranking for them. There should just be one system to avoid confusion and make it more clear cut as to who is ranked where.



Comments (6)    Posted in Football (American)    

Subscribe RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or Trackback from your own site.




6 Responses to 'Why are there so many different ranking systems for college football?'

  1. jas j - January 2nd, 2009 at 11:37 am

    major college football is pointless as long as there is voting and polls- don’t waste your time watching that farce

  2. KansasStateSucks - January 3rd, 2009 at 8:15 am

    The BSC is the real ranking… it’s made up partially by the computer rankings

  3. jesusaves90 - January 6th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    The BCS is what is used to determine who plays in the championship game. Part of the reason there are more than 1 is that the BCS doesn’t come out until week 6. All the other ones come out preseason. Also, i believe the Harris and USA Today and Computer are the three components of the BCS.

  4. mthomas720 - January 6th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    Well the only one that really matters is the BCS. Thats the official rankings (by the computer unfortunately). The other ones are just other polls that are just for show. I guess its just so you can see how humans would rank them, and each of those polls is done by different humans….I don’t really know…

  5. Teeroy - January 7th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

    the bcs uses usa, harris in their cal, ap left , its all garbage they need a playoff of some sort, until then we usually left up to the favs, but this yr a kink has been put in their, the teams will have to almost earn the spot there

  6. Peter_AZ - January 9th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    All the different polls are invented by people who think they can come up with a better system than all the others. However, all the upsets (which NO poll predicted, like Illinois beating Ohio State, Arizona beating Oregon, and on back to Appalachian beating Michigan) show that the polls don’t really mean anything. The systems are largely based on guesses and favoritism. So basically, all the systems are wrong to a significant extent.

    Actually, having different polls (with different ideas which team is better) gives a little insight into the fact that’s a very inexact science.

    Using a “computer” for the BCS doesn’t make it any better — if you can’t enter in everything about a team (like who’s injured — which human voters CAN factor in), the input you’re giving the computer is nonsense. The old computer expression is “garbage in, garbage out,” and it applies here.


Leave a Reply