This weekend something popped to my attention that I really hadn't considered before. Before I write this it must be prefaced by saying this most likely would not have come to my attention if I were not a Clemson fan, but I will do my best to stay objective.
Last week Clemson suffered a 49-37 loss in which Florida State proved they were the better football team. Coming into last weeks game Florida State was 14.5 point favorites against the Tigers. ESPN analysts on College Gameday predicted the Seminoles to roll the Tigers at home, because of their powerful defense and unstoppable offensive attack. Nobody gave Clemson a chance. I picked the Seminoles to win by 10 points and wasn't far off with my pick.
What is really irritating skin is how the media praises Florida State as National Championship contenders and talks of E.J. Manuel as a possible Heisman finalist, but drops Clemson 7 spots in the rankings. It is and was extremely harsh to drop the Tigers from 10 to 17. Anyone who watched that game knows it was a very well played games by both teams. Even the analysts will admit that Clemson played their heart out and had control of that game until late in the third. But 7 spots? Seems a but much.
What the media is portraying by dropping Clemson 7 spots is Florida, Texas, Southern Cal, Ohio State, TCU and Oklahoma are better than Clemson. And for the first 3 teams, I would agree. However, based on schedules up until that point, there is no reason the Tigers should have fallen behind Oklahoma, TCU or Ohio State. If the SEC is all it is chalked out to be, than Clemson has a pretty nice out of conference win against the Auburn Tigers. Not to mention, TCU and Oklahoma had not played anyone up to that point.
The media cannot continue to praise Florida State for their poise and talent in that game and drop the Tigers 7 spots in the polls. It is unjustifiable and inconsistent. If so, Florida State's loss means less now, because Clemson is a middle of the pack top 25 team.
Florida State is around the 6th or 7th best team in the country (In my opinion) and is better than Clemson this year. But if Florida State is going to receive praise for beating Clemson, then it is not valid to slam Clemson for competing with and coming close to beating the Seminoles.
The second point of inconsistency is dropping the USC Trojans 11 spots after losing to Stanford. The Trojans lost a 3 point game against the Stanford Cardinal and were seemingly punished for it. The Cardinal on the other hand jumped from #21 to #6. There is no reason to justify dropping USC outside the top 10. It is okay to move up Stanford, because they were undefeated and had proven they could compete with the best (by beating USC), but it does not make any sense to drop them so low, while moving Stanford high at the same time. If Stanford is moved to 8 and praised for what they did, you cannot drop USC to 13. If it is viewed in the vice versa, it would have been justified for USC to be ranked 13 if Stanford were closer to 12.
Last year Alabama played LSU in the "Game of the century" and lost 9-6 in overtime. However, Alabama only dropped to number 3, staying in front of an 8-0 Stanford squad and 8-0 Boise State.
The media and polls need to start being more consistent or it is going to end up hurting a team trying to get back into the race for a National Championship, such as a Southern Cal. Last year by only moving Alabama down to 3, they allowed the Crimson Tide an opportunity to sneak back into the National Championship, without ever playing for their conference title. If it had been any other team besides a top tier SEC team, they would have fallen to 4th, maybe even 5th.
It's probably a bit of nit picking, but it could turn into a real issue in the future. While a committee will decide the 4 team playoff next year, the BCS will still determine rankings presented to the committee. The committee will consider resume, but will no doubt take the rankings into consideration, at least to a small degree.
My point is, if you are going to drop and raise a team's ranking, just be consistent with it. Don't leave the world guessing as to why this a team drops so far.
We are moving closer to consistency with a playoff, but there is clearly a long way to go.
The reason Alabama dropped so little and Clemson dropped so 'far' is simply because everybody knew whoever lost to LSU v Bama game would still be one of the top teams in the country. Whoever lost the Clemson v FSU game would shown to be the lesser of the two ACC schools.. And nobody really knew how good they were to begin with. As you said, nobody knew why FSU had the praise before the game they did. you can argue the same for Clemson after coming off that roller coaster season they did last year. Bama and LSU had been proven. They destroyed whoever else they played.
ReplyDeleteAlso a thought, there's a saying that goes, "It's not a stereotype if it's true." The SEC is THE BEST conference in college football. By far. Yes, you say they're top heavy.. They have weak teams at the bottom. But so does every other conference in the country. Alah Indiana, Kansas, Washington State, etc. The only difference is, the top teams in the SEC, Georgia, LSU, Alabama, USC, are BETTER than the top teams in most of those other conferences. And the middle of the road teams, Florida, Tennessee, maybe even Vanderbilt, are far better than the middle of the roads in other conferences. A team who's ranked 1-2 in the nation and a part of that conference who loses to another 1-2 ranked team in that conference doesn't deserve to fall passed 4. Especially if they only lost by a field goal in overtime. That loss doesn't make them look like a worse team. Clemson losing by two touchdowns to a team who you still say isn't a NC contender (which hurts your case, by the way) looks a lot worse. And adding in how they were ranked 10 before the loss makes the fall to 17 that much more justifiable.
MY point is that Bama's loss last year was nowhere near as bad as Clemson's was this year. Was Clemson's loss bad? No. In relation, however, to Bama's loss? Yeah, kind of. The reason the SEC gets bias from pollsters is because the SEC is so freakin' good! That's just the reality of it, dude.