One AP Top 25 voter doesn’t have Tennessee ranked after blowout win over Georgia Tech, and his ballot has some other bizarre choices
Some very odd choices were made with the AP Top 25 Poll this week, including a decision with the Tennessee Volunteers.
The new AP Top 25 poll was released on Sunday afternoon and the Tennessee Vols moved up three spots, from No. 18 to No. 15, after their 45-24 road win over Georgia Tech.
I’m not a big fan of rankings (more on that later) — especially this early in the season — but this feels about right for Tennessee based on the movement we usually see in the rankings.
Nearly every voter feels that Tennessee should be ranked.
Except for one.
The Athletic’s Ralph Russo didn’t include Tennessee on his top 25 ballot.
I don’t know Russo’s reasoning, but that is a bizarre choice. Tennessee has one of the most talented (aka expensive) rosters in college football. And they’ve won their first two games by an average of 34 points, including a road win over a Georgia Tech team that is typically a tough out (the Yellow Jackets aren’t a juggernaut, but they are usually in every game on their schedule). That feels like a team that should be somewhere in the top 25.
I’m not trying to throw shade at Russo (he’s a fellow Mets fan…it’s nothing personal), but he’s clearly trying to make a statement with his ballot.
For example, he has Oregon ranked at No. 22 after getting beat by an Oklahoma State team that lost by 14 points to Tulsa in Week 1. To justify this, he has Tulsa at No. 20 and Oklahoma State at No. 21. And then he has Boise State, the only team Oregon has beaten, ranked at No. 23.
Clever stuff. But that’s a lot of work to justify ranking Oregon higher than they should be after a loss to a team that hadn’t won a game in over a year.
The more bizarre choice, though, is ranking Michigan at No. 25 and Western Michigan, which lost to Michigan in Week 1, at No. 24.
Now, Russo is clearly making the statement that he thinks Western Michigan “beat” Michigan in Week 1 (because of the clock incident).
So Russo has Michigan ranked even though he appears to believe their only real win is over an Oklahoma team that he believes shouldn’t be ranked.
This is more confusing than Interstellar.
I don’t know if Russo is giving the Vols the finger. Maybe he’s just got too much legwork going on to justify having Oregon still ranked, and then he also wanted to make a statement about the Michigan fiasco, and simply didn’t have room for Tennessee.
And to that, I say, just rank the teams fairly, dude.
Either way, rankings by writers are silly. It’s impossible to accurately rank these teams 12 hours after the last college football game is played on Saturday. There’s simply no way writers can watch every team play and get an accurate feel on how good each team is. All they’re doing, in most cases, is looking at box scores. And box scores, as any baseball fan will quickly tell you, never ever tell the full story of a game.
