Polling Shenanigans

The contortionary fallout from Michigan’s loss to Appalachian State continued when the AP sillily declared that I-AA teams were eligible for the I-A poll. (It should be mentioned that a I-AA poll already exists, although it is not operated by the AP.) The discussion is so preposterous I hesitate to give it any attention, but it’s ripe for the picking.

The first problem with this is that keeping track of all the rank-worthy teams is a tough enough task. I-AA games, even involving good teams, are not on TV in many parts of the country. Are I-A media voters supposed to actually see these teams or simply continue the moronic trend of ranking by looking at final scores and statistics instead of actually seeing what’s going on? Does the AP actually think it’s improving the quality of its poll by giving voters more work to do?

In the interest of fairness, why can’t I-A teams be ranked in the I-AA poll? With all the opening-week blowouts mismatching I-A and I-AA teams, the poll would be flooded with top-division squads. Surely the powers that be in I-AA football don’t want this, but they feel content to crash the I-A poll party.

Stop. In the tautology of the day, a I-AA team is not a I-A team. It has consciously elected, for whatever reason (financial/regulatory/scholastic/institutional/traditional) to not compete at the highest level of college football. That doesn’t make it a bad program – good football is fun to watch whatever the classification – but it also doesn’t make it a competitor to the top.

That also doesn’t mean it can’t beat an occasional I-A opponent (Michigan was Appalachian State’s first victim in at least five tries), but a win shouldn’t be confused with a statement of superiority.

Michigan State basketball beat the Harlem Globetrotters a few years back. Does that mean Tom Izzo should take his team on an international tour, line up a nightly patsy and dress the Spartans in red white and blue? No. Michigan State doesn’t want to be a basketball circus. That they played one for a game doesn’t change that.

The AP poll is far more credible than the coaches’ or Harris poll, but it shot itself in the foot in this instance.

There’s another thing going on – Michigan is simultaneously a good team and a bad team, depending on what argument is being made. Commentators have made a huge deal about the game being the first loss by a ranked I-A team to a I-AA team, but Michigan fell out of the poll after the game.

So…let’s get this straight. Appalachian State’s two-point win over fifth-ranked Michigan was so powerful that they should be ranked with the I-A teams. Meanwhile, Michigan showed it was such a good team that it wound up unranked in both polls the next week.

Where’s the congruence here? Did they beat a good team or a bad team? Good (i.e. top ten) teams don’t usually fall completely out of polls no matter how badly they get beat.

Recent evidence suggests Michigan is more deserving of their current unranked status than they were last week, when a blocked field goal was all that stood between Michigan and escaping the upset. So which one is it – was Michigan a good team whose credentials give Appalachian State credibility, or a lame outfit who loss to the best team in I-AA football shouldn’t have surprised us?

So App State, a very good team, beat a I-A team that is now unranked and unregarded. For this one person voted them into the I-A poll? Hell, a Stanford team that wound up 5-6 lost to UC-Davis (a provisional I-AA school moving up from Division II) in the second week of 2005. No one clamored for Davis, who had close losses to I-AA powerhouses New Hampshire and Portland State, to get votes in the I-A poll.

But that’s the situation we were in after the first week of the season.