OT: Maybe it’s time to get rid of the AP Poll once and for all - Awful Announcing

[Skeets]

Other than the national championship itself, everything is a poll: NPOY, AA, FOY, COY awards are all voted on by various panels. Until we let such awards and selections be determined by AI 😱, I think we’re stuck with human beings making such decisions.

OD, this made me laugh at first, but after thinking about it, AI can watch almost all the games, at least those that are broadcast. Would that be better than a (possibly drunken) lazy sportswriter who watches 3 or 4 games plus maybe a dozen game highlights a week? After all, a sportswriter's job is to write, not watch TV.

 

[Vowelguy]

I’m not sure why a condescending brand of sarcasm is your go-to in a disagreement.

Unranked doesn’t equal bad team. There’s still a good ‘ol’ girls club where well-known programs can lose 4 games and still be a ranked team while a lesser known school can be undefeated and never even considered for a vote. There’s still are also lazy sportswriters who don’t bother to learn about mi-majors or “lesser” P4 schools so they just ignore them.

And sometimes there are fabulous players toiling away in obscurity at some mid-major. The Florida channels show JUCO games here. A lot of the teams look slow and small but occasionally there’s a player that makes me sit up and take notice. And these kids play good team ball - there are a lot of unknown terrific coaches as well.

There are a lot of reasons for watching unranked teams.

when someone twists my words to mean something I didn’t say I tend to get testy.

Casual fans don’t generally start on a sport to watch average teams. That’s why the national championship game or #1 vs #2 games get big ratings while Furman vs Omaha doesn’t.

Rankings provide a useful service to help orient fans and even potential viewers about who are considered the top teams.

 

[SVCBeercats]

Beat writers aren't up to speed on the top 30-ish teams, never mind all 136 of them. In addition, there are probably a bunch of relatively inexperienced writers that are poll voters, so that complicates the whole deal.

Spot on! I have objected to folks getting riled up by an opinion poll. Sports Journalist cannot have watched a sufficient number of games. Also just what is their "expertise" based upon? Watching games? Fans who have far greater in-depth knowledge of their own favorite team. Not that fans have much more knowledge of many other teams. Even the coaches' poll is a joke. The coaches will have an expertise relative to the teams they prepare for and play. Although they will have ability to evaluate other teams by watching a few games, certainly more than sports journalists. Plus, any opinion poll is mostly based on biases for/against certain teams and conferences. It is a waste of time to bother with such polls.

 

[DefenseBB]

As an ardent follower of this sport for the past 20 years, I will say the polls have gotten better and many voters take their responsibility seriously. Many will use advanced metric sites and record games of interest given all the streaming services. Yes, there are absolutely the lazy writers and coaches who do zero thought and effort but with the disclosure of the voting these people are being seen for the slugs they are and like I said, it has improved. I do like seeing the polls for amusement. Again, forums and divergent opinions also exist for dialogue and amusement so perhaps I find it ironic by the original poster and his complaint…

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Spot on! I have objected to folks getting riled up by an opinion poll. Sports Journalist cannot have watched a sufficient number of games. Also just what is their "expertise" based upon? Watching games? Fans who have far greater in-depth knowledge of their own favorite team. Not that fans have much more knowledge of many other teams. Even the coaches' poll is a joke. The coaches will have an expertise relative to the teams they prepare for and play. Although they will have ability to evaluate other teams by watching a few games, certainly more than sports journalists. Plus, any opinion poll is mostly based on biases for/against certain teams and conferences. It is a waste of time to bother with such polls.

The coaches have an assistant do it. It is one of the factors that has devalued opinions regarding the Coaches Poll.

I have no problem with coaches or writers making a poll without particularly seeing games. I've seen a huge amount of games since 1996 - probably 25 seasons (or more) of almost every home game and quite a number of seasons when we were in NJ seeing many away games - heck, for at least 2 seasons my wife and I saw every Rutgers game in person. During the season we watch the best of televised games in the fall, when we are still wrapped up with football, and parts of a majority of televised games for the rest of the season - I admit I don't typically stream, but will if I have a special interest.

Here's the thing - it isn't the watching of the game that informs my opinion of teams. Its the games they won, who they played, scores, a general feel for the games. All readily available for someone doing a poll. It isn't that I can't tell bad basketball vs. good basketball and a talented team vs. a non-talented team (at least in a general sense). But that is all inherent in the results.

The downside is that the initial poll is just based on, well, very little - the prior season teams are history, the reputation of the school and coach doesn't guarantee anything, and these polls are close to a guess. Unfortunately, there is a lot of moving teams up and down from these starting points and I agree it makes sometimes odd polls. But again, polls are just reflections of where things are at.

Seeding for the NCAA tournament involves a much more rigorous deep dive. But those folks do the deep dive. There is no reason the polls should require it, because, in the end, they don't actually mean anything. Just saying.

 

[cancontent]

OD, this made me laugh at first, but after thinking about it, AI can watch almost all the games, at least those that are broadcast. Would that be better than a (possibly drunken) lazy sportswriter who watches 3 or 4 games plus maybe a dozen game highlights a week? After all, a sportswriter's job is to write, not watch TV.

The idea of AI does sound more efficient, however AI is built on information that it's given and can be vulnerable to bias and errors. It may help but human efforts to verify accuracy would still be required.

I don't understand your comment about sportswriters and TV however because writers need to watch games to do their job. What I find interesting about this debate is you'd think it would have been harder to complete these polls during eras where games weren't televised like they are now. The challenge to me is how they balance it all.

 

[Vowelguy]

case in point:

The Illinois-Indiana football game is a long-running nothing affair. Based on that most folks would have no reason to watch.

This year, for the first time in 75 years, both teams are ranked in the top 20. The rankings show us that this year it might be a game worth watching. I watch a fair amount of CFB, but without those rankings I would likely not have known its (potential) significance.

 

[Plebe]

I honestly don't understand the impulse to abolish a poll just because fans love to quibble over the poll results. The quibbling is a sign of the poll's success. It's a conversation starter.

In NCAA FBS football, the situation is quite different once the first CFP poll gets released (somewhere around early November?), because at that point fans hardly care about the much less consequential AP poll.