I enjoy a good prank as much as the next guy, but those tricksters running the Bowl Championship Series are just too much.
Have you seen the first edition of the new Harris Interactive College Football Poll? If not, just take a quick peek at the bottom of this page. It looks pretty close to the Associated Press Poll and the USA Today/Coaches Poll, right? It should. After all, that was sort of the point, because the BCS-which ranks teams based on a complex formula involving both human and computer rankings, as well as other fun things like strength of schedule, quality of opponents and your uncle's SAT scores-needed a new human component after the AP pulled its poll from the BCS formula.
So, out goes AP, in steps the fine folks at Harris Interactive. A perusal of their website, www.harrisinteractive.com, shows that these folks are serious about their polling. (Tangent number one: On a different web search, I stumbled across bowl game projections on www.cbs.sportline.com. After just one conference game-and really, what more do you need than that to make accurate predictions-Wisconsin has been penciled in for the Capital One Bowl in Orlando. Disney World, here we come!)
Pretty much anything you could want to survey public opinion about, the Harris people will do it. Want to know how Americans are feeling about the Israeli withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip? Yup, it's there. Curious as to reactions on the possible ratification of a constitution in Iraq? They've got their fingers on the pulse of America for that one, too. (Tangent number two: I could not, however, find any Harris polling that answered the question, \What would you do for a million dollars?"" Fortunately for me, the Sept. 18 online survey in The Daily Cardinal revealed that while 8 percent of us would drink rancid milk and 16 percent of us would play tag with a grizzly bear, a whopping 76 percent of us would listen to a Michael Bolton album. To which I can only say, shame on three-fourths of you. Have you no dignity?)
According to the Harris website, the poll is, ""a panel of 114 former players, coaches, administrators and current and former media who have committed to submitting ranking college teams each week."" Interesting word choice, ""committed,"" because some of the results make me think some of the panelists ought to be shipped off to an insane asylum.
For example, Michigan is still ranked at 2-2, despite falling off the map. I guess that's OK-it makes Wisconsin look that much better for knocking them off. But then there's 2-2 Illinois, which got 13 votes a week after giving up 61 points and 705 yards to Michigan State. Worst of all is Idaho. The Vandals are 0-4 and were shut out by Hawaii on Saturday, yet they mysteriously received five votes. (Tangent number three: In trying to figure out just what a Vandal is, I discovered that Idaho's mascot is Joe Vandal, a bearded, motorcycle-riding Viking raider. I just thought you might want to know that.)
So we are supposed to accept this poll-in which the individual panelists' votes are not revealed until the end of the regular season-as part of the human element that helps determine who plays for the national championship? C'mon, quit pulling my leg. Unfortunately, as is always the case with the BCS, it's not a practical joke-it's practically a joke.
mtworringer@wisc.edu.
