As a youth, my single mom could not afford new clothing for the four of us children, so most of the time, my brother and I had to scrounge up odd jobs or paper routes to earn money to buy "special" clothing for ourselves. I had done so the summer before seventh grade and purchased the sweetest pair of parachute pants. They were a royal blue and instead of zippers, I had snaps on the sides that exposed a black material. I just knew the chicks would flock to me the first day of school, which ultimately turned out to be the only day of school I wore my Hammer pants. Middle school-aged kids are very cruel to begin with, but when you are a newer kid in town (one year) and not very popular and in a small town where Wranglers and Levi's are the norm (for decades), it was inevitable to get the non-parachute-donned, popular boys to tease in all ways imaginable to humiliate me in front of those potentially swarming girls that now wouldn't even look in my direction. At the time, it was an awesome idea and I thought I could predict how people would react to wearing such sweet attire, but I was quickly put into reality when the test finally came. I'm sure that there were some parts of the country that these Hammer pants were more accepted by peers in middle school, but in the rustic cowboy town in Central Oregon, it was not meant to be.
My optimistic view of parachute pants and the reality check I experienced in the seventh grade remind me of the grossly inconsistent adjustments made from week to week by the AP poll voters. I feel like they are voting for teams like how I felt when purchasing those royal blue beauties. It seems like a good idea at the time, but the real test hasn't occurred yet and reality hasn't hit.
First of all, those voters have a stewardship over their pre-season votes and have to stick with them, or do they? They are responsible to provide accurate accounts of all the FBS schools in the nation. All the teams must be monitored closely and fairly represented in the weekly top 25 with respect to the teams' success (or failure). So, as I glance through the first couple weeks of the AP top 25, I see some accurate representation of some schools and others where they may seem to be way off due to how things have unfolded thus far. It's like a work in progress for the voters. They need to make necessary adjustments each week and fess-up when they don't make the wisest decision one week and change it immediately for the following week.
An obvious example that we witnessed already this season, is the pre-season #10 team, Arkansas. Of course this is a pre-season #10 team! The Hogs are in the SEC! 'Nuff said, right? Well, for me, that's not good enough. They just lost their offensive guru and head coach in the off season. Arkansas was starting a new season with a new coach that hasn't really glistened with success, but with the talent that flows to the SEC, anybody would be successful, right? Well, that #10 team jumped two spots by beating that hard-nosed, bruising team from Jacksonville State (yes, sarcasm was intended) with a score of 49-24, who put up 322 yards on an SEC defense. Yikes! The good thing was that Tyler Wilson, arguably the best QB in the conference, needed to play only two and a half quarters and Arkansas still put up 564 yards. Jacksonville State had garbage points and yards in the second half while the starters were resting and letting the second and third stringers get some reps. The following week is when the tragedy happened. Louisiana-Monroe came to town and put up a real fight. They hung in long enough to be able to get a last minute score to force overtime with 21 unanswered points. Arkansas made a field goal in overtime. Then the shocking thing happened when the Warhawks QB seemed to have muffed up a play but found himself with a huge amount of green in front of him to sprint into the endzone. Ouch! This is when Coach Smith should have put in his bankruptcy papers. He'll be lucky to have a job by season's end. Now, Arkansas may have started off ranked too high with a new coach, but the voters were seeing stars or unicorns chasing rainbows or something to advance Arkansas more than one spot to fill in the Michigan loss after the Razorbacks' initial win. However, the voters got it right when they tucked in their pride and took Arkansas completely out of the top 25. That's got to be hard for the voters to put a team at #8 one week and the next, leave that same team unranked. Like my mom never told me, doing the right thing is not always easy. So, Arkansas was definitely a pair of those parachute pants that made it to the second day of school and now is a nice, classic pair of Wranglers like everyone else that doesn't find themselves in the top 25. Now if only that second game of the season would have been Alabama and the Tide would have slapped them around a few hours and humiliated them, that would have been expected and the Hogs would have dropped a few spots, but not completely out of the top 25. Unfortunately, it happened to be a much, much lesser team. This will not look good when conference play begins unless Coach Smith can make a total one-eighty and utilize the talent he has on this squad.
There are many questions I have for the voters besides, "How can I get your job?" Some of the placements of rankings each week draw my finger to the temple of my head and make me say, "Hmmm." Let me mention a few of those now. The obvious one, is why would anybody vote USC at number one? A great team? Yes! (My favorite.) However, with the NCAA sanctions, USC lacks the depth to make it a whole season without injuries in key areas that could potentially find them struggling to win games - especially with the increasingly competitive conference of the Pac-12 and the nine conference games that the conference schedules every year (of course, Colorado is developing into the Duke and Vanderbilt of the Pac-12 - a.k.a. "bye week"). A top ten ranking would suffice, but #1 is really pushing it. Same with my second favorite Pac-12 team, Oregon - ranked too high. Hello! They lost the starting QB and have to start either a sophomore or a freshman, and they lost arguably the best running back the Ducks have ever had with Heisman finalist, LaMichael James. Again, near the top ten is feasible, but top five? C'mon! Let the teams who lose personnel and star players prove themselves a few times first. Another team is Florida. Why are they ranked at all? This is the same team that had Urban Meyer at the helm two seasons ago as one of the best recruiters, ever. The cupboards were left full of talent, with some stored in the pantry, as well. You just need to be a decent coach to win 10 games with all that talent. Well, Will Muschamp's 7-6 record was a huge disappointment, and he does NOT recruit better than Coach Meyer, so I have no idea how Coach Muschamp will improve from the 7-6 record in his first year as a head coach and who he paid off to find the Gators in the top 25. I hope they prove me wrong, but this trend doesn't bode well for the Florida faithful.
After week two of the 2012 season, I learned a few things in regards to how things are perceived by the voters in the AP poll. First thing I learned was, I'm not the only person in the world that regrettably purchased a pair of parachute pants in middle school. I saw four top 20 teams lose to unranked teams and found themselves on the outside looking in. I mentioned Arkansas falling like the net worth of its coach, but then there was the offensively anemic Wisconsin team with the best returning running back in the nation ranked at #13, who couldn't score against a questionable Oregon State team until less than two minutes left in THE GAME. Now the media wants to make a big stink about the call on the on-side kick? Really? Do you think the Badgers suddenly had super momentum to score a "quick one" in just over a minute left from the 50-yard line? Please!! Maybe the Beavers really played defense or Wisconsin needs to get rid of the offensive line coach (oh, wait! The latter did occur), or maybe it was actually a combination of both. With the game against Nichols State being postponed, Oregon State essentially had more than one week to prepare for the Badgers. Is it really that far fetched? The third team that lost was the #16 Nebraska squad that played in the Rose bowl against UCLA. The Huskers left LA as losers by six, even with the huge 92-yard run by Martinez. The Red Shirts defense didn't corral Johnathan Franklin and let him go on a 217 yard day. The Husker defense kept Franklin out of the endzone until the short pass in the fourth quarter. The fourth team that left their high-profile offense home was the Oklahoma State Cowboys when they traveled to the deserts of Arizona. The Wildcats tried their best to give the Pokes a taste of their own medicine when Oklahoma State put up 84 points the week prior on the lowly Savannah State. The Cowboys went from shutting out one team the first week to getting 59 pasted on them the next. As a Pac-12 fan, the second week of the 2012 season went like a dream - of the four unranked Pac-12 teams playing ranked, non-conference foes, three came out winners (the only loss was Washington losing - badly - to the #3 ranked LSU Tigers). So, besides Washington not showing up and Colorado looking like a community college and Utah losing their starting QB and a rare game to Utah State, the conference was well represented with wins against mostly BCS conference opponents. So, keeping up with the annual standards of the AP poll, an SEC school loses its way out of the top 25 (although, replaced by Tennessee) while Pac-12 teams have to win their way in with the additions of UCLA at #22 and Arizona at #24. It's weird not to see the other team, Oregon State, who had the biggest upset of the three to not break into the top 25.
In conclusion, the AP poll is very inconsistent with how they vote the weekly top 25. Each time I look at a new week of the poll, I feel like I'm a Wrangler-wearing cool kid watching a parachute pants-wearing kid walking onto the playground at middle school and saying to myself, "What was that kid thinking when he bought those?" I'm sure at the time the vote seemed like it made sense and would be popular with the ladies, but ultimately that will be the last time the vote will be like that again. As long as the correct adjustments are made throughout the season, everything should all work out in the end, right?
First of all, those voters have a stewardship over their pre-season votes and have to stick with them, or do they? They are responsible to provide accurate accounts of all the FBS schools in the nation. All the teams must be monitored closely and fairly represented in the weekly top 25 with respect to the teams' success (or failure). So, as I glance through the first couple weeks of the AP top 25, I see some accurate representation of some schools and others where they may seem to be way off due to how things have unfolded thus far. It's like a work in progress for the voters. They need to make necessary adjustments each week and fess-up when they don't make the wisest decision one week and change it immediately for the following week.
An obvious example that we witnessed already this season, is the pre-season #10 team, Arkansas. Of course this is a pre-season #10 team! The Hogs are in the SEC! 'Nuff said, right? Well, for me, that's not good enough. They just lost their offensive guru and head coach in the off season. Arkansas was starting a new season with a new coach that hasn't really glistened with success, but with the talent that flows to the SEC, anybody would be successful, right? Well, that #10 team jumped two spots by beating that hard-nosed, bruising team from Jacksonville State (yes, sarcasm was intended) with a score of 49-24, who put up 322 yards on an SEC defense. Yikes! The good thing was that Tyler Wilson, arguably the best QB in the conference, needed to play only two and a half quarters and Arkansas still put up 564 yards. Jacksonville State had garbage points and yards in the second half while the starters were resting and letting the second and third stringers get some reps. The following week is when the tragedy happened. Louisiana-Monroe came to town and put up a real fight. They hung in long enough to be able to get a last minute score to force overtime with 21 unanswered points. Arkansas made a field goal in overtime. Then the shocking thing happened when the Warhawks QB seemed to have muffed up a play but found himself with a huge amount of green in front of him to sprint into the endzone. Ouch! This is when Coach Smith should have put in his bankruptcy papers. He'll be lucky to have a job by season's end. Now, Arkansas may have started off ranked too high with a new coach, but the voters were seeing stars or unicorns chasing rainbows or something to advance Arkansas more than one spot to fill in the Michigan loss after the Razorbacks' initial win. However, the voters got it right when they tucked in their pride and took Arkansas completely out of the top 25. That's got to be hard for the voters to put a team at #8 one week and the next, leave that same team unranked. Like my mom never told me, doing the right thing is not always easy. So, Arkansas was definitely a pair of those parachute pants that made it to the second day of school and now is a nice, classic pair of Wranglers like everyone else that doesn't find themselves in the top 25. Now if only that second game of the season would have been Alabama and the Tide would have slapped them around a few hours and humiliated them, that would have been expected and the Hogs would have dropped a few spots, but not completely out of the top 25. Unfortunately, it happened to be a much, much lesser team. This will not look good when conference play begins unless Coach Smith can make a total one-eighty and utilize the talent he has on this squad.
There are many questions I have for the voters besides, "How can I get your job?" Some of the placements of rankings each week draw my finger to the temple of my head and make me say, "Hmmm." Let me mention a few of those now. The obvious one, is why would anybody vote USC at number one? A great team? Yes! (My favorite.) However, with the NCAA sanctions, USC lacks the depth to make it a whole season without injuries in key areas that could potentially find them struggling to win games - especially with the increasingly competitive conference of the Pac-12 and the nine conference games that the conference schedules every year (of course, Colorado is developing into the Duke and Vanderbilt of the Pac-12 - a.k.a. "bye week"). A top ten ranking would suffice, but #1 is really pushing it. Same with my second favorite Pac-12 team, Oregon - ranked too high. Hello! They lost the starting QB and have to start either a sophomore or a freshman, and they lost arguably the best running back the Ducks have ever had with Heisman finalist, LaMichael James. Again, near the top ten is feasible, but top five? C'mon! Let the teams who lose personnel and star players prove themselves a few times first. Another team is Florida. Why are they ranked at all? This is the same team that had Urban Meyer at the helm two seasons ago as one of the best recruiters, ever. The cupboards were left full of talent, with some stored in the pantry, as well. You just need to be a decent coach to win 10 games with all that talent. Well, Will Muschamp's 7-6 record was a huge disappointment, and he does NOT recruit better than Coach Meyer, so I have no idea how Coach Muschamp will improve from the 7-6 record in his first year as a head coach and who he paid off to find the Gators in the top 25. I hope they prove me wrong, but this trend doesn't bode well for the Florida faithful.
After week two of the 2012 season, I learned a few things in regards to how things are perceived by the voters in the AP poll. First thing I learned was, I'm not the only person in the world that regrettably purchased a pair of parachute pants in middle school. I saw four top 20 teams lose to unranked teams and found themselves on the outside looking in. I mentioned Arkansas falling like the net worth of its coach, but then there was the offensively anemic Wisconsin team with the best returning running back in the nation ranked at #13, who couldn't score against a questionable Oregon State team until less than two minutes left in THE GAME. Now the media wants to make a big stink about the call on the on-side kick? Really? Do you think the Badgers suddenly had super momentum to score a "quick one" in just over a minute left from the 50-yard line? Please!! Maybe the Beavers really played defense or Wisconsin needs to get rid of the offensive line coach (oh, wait! The latter did occur), or maybe it was actually a combination of both. With the game against Nichols State being postponed, Oregon State essentially had more than one week to prepare for the Badgers. Is it really that far fetched? The third team that lost was the #16 Nebraska squad that played in the Rose bowl against UCLA. The Huskers left LA as losers by six, even with the huge 92-yard run by Martinez. The Red Shirts defense didn't corral Johnathan Franklin and let him go on a 217 yard day. The Husker defense kept Franklin out of the endzone until the short pass in the fourth quarter. The fourth team that left their high-profile offense home was the Oklahoma State Cowboys when they traveled to the deserts of Arizona. The Wildcats tried their best to give the Pokes a taste of their own medicine when Oklahoma State put up 84 points the week prior on the lowly Savannah State. The Cowboys went from shutting out one team the first week to getting 59 pasted on them the next. As a Pac-12 fan, the second week of the 2012 season went like a dream - of the four unranked Pac-12 teams playing ranked, non-conference foes, three came out winners (the only loss was Washington losing - badly - to the #3 ranked LSU Tigers). So, besides Washington not showing up and Colorado looking like a community college and Utah losing their starting QB and a rare game to Utah State, the conference was well represented with wins against mostly BCS conference opponents. So, keeping up with the annual standards of the AP poll, an SEC school loses its way out of the top 25 (although, replaced by Tennessee) while Pac-12 teams have to win their way in with the additions of UCLA at #22 and Arizona at #24. It's weird not to see the other team, Oregon State, who had the biggest upset of the three to not break into the top 25.
In conclusion, the AP poll is very inconsistent with how they vote the weekly top 25. Each time I look at a new week of the poll, I feel like I'm a Wrangler-wearing cool kid watching a parachute pants-wearing kid walking onto the playground at middle school and saying to myself, "What was that kid thinking when he bought those?" I'm sure at the time the vote seemed like it made sense and would be popular with the ladies, but ultimately that will be the last time the vote will be like that again. As long as the correct adjustments are made throughout the season, everything should all work out in the end, right?
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