From: don.p.del.grande@gmail.com   
      
   > One of the weknesses of the polls has always been "you lose. you drop, you   
   win, you stay or go up". Who you lost to or beat is secondary. It's how    
   > TCUs and FSUs get over-ranked. Numerous other exmples. The times that   
   doesn't happen is almost always pollster bias, which is another weakness in   
   the    
   > polls. It was always better to lose early so you can recover as the season   
   progresses.    
      
   I think the biggest example of this is 1993, when #2 Notre Dame beat #1   
   Florida State, only to lose to Boston College a week later.    
   The real question may not be so much, "Did #2 Notre Dame deserve to be #1 more   
   than a team that lost to it" as, "Did a Notre Dame team whose only loss was to   
   Boston College deserve to jump to #2 over a Nebraska team whose only loss was   
   in the de facto    
   national championship game?".   
      
   There's a new bias, if you ask me: apparently, there's a new unwritten rule   
   where the CFP championship game loser should be ranked #2. How did a TCU team   
   that got blown out by Georgia finish ahead of an Ohio State team that lost to   
   that same Georgia team    
   by a shanked field goal attempt about a week earlier? I was going to suggest a   
   similar case for Alabama over Washington this year - but Alabama somehow   
   finished fifth.   
       
   > AP poll bias was actually researched in an academic study ten years ago. The   
   conclusions were voters favored teams from their area, teams in large    
   > market areas were favored, teams watched on national tv were favored, and   
   W-L records were voted up or down with little knowledge of the team or    
   > schedule.   
      
   Anybody familiar with my NOTCFP rankings may remember when I used the AP   
   voters as the "committee members". Early in the season, they tended to favor   
   teams in their area, but eventually they all honed in on each other.   
      
   Bonus RSFC Trivia while we're waiting for something to come out of this week's   
   NCAA Convention (actually, pretty much all of the Division I stuff is   
   Wednesday and Thursday) and the football rules committee: name pretty much the   
   only instance where a    
   school trumpeted a team's ranking in a poll other than using a #1 ranking to   
   claim a national championship (I didn't mention any names COUGHucfWHEEZE).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)