College football season is in full swing, which means the upsets have started rolling in like a rising tide, but not a Crimson Tide (screw you Alabama). Last Saturday saw four ranked teams bite the dust. Georgia, USC, Virginia Tech and Louisville.
This begs the question, why? Why is college football full of top 25 teams that lose? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll drink up upsets all day long, but where’s the issue here? I see two.
No. 1: Preseason Polls.
These polls are a big reason why teams get “upset” early in the year. They’re based off last year’s results. Florida State won the national title last year and didn’t lose everyone, so they’re preseason number one. Simple as that.
The polls value program prestige over rational analysis. They don’t value coaching changes, players graduating or recruiting classes enough. This will lead to average football teams falling flat on their faces early in the season. Everyone is surprised when a top 10 team loses, but if you look close enough, maybe it wasn’t that big of an upset.
Ohio State is a good example of this. Even after the loss of quarterback Braxton Miller and a weak performance against Navy, the Buckeyes still sat at No.8 on the AP poll, after a preseason ranking of No. 5. This ranking was obliterated a week later when they lost to Virginia Tech, but the warning signs were there well before the Hokies scored their fifth touchdown in Columbus.
Preseason polls also put way too much weight into conference affiliation. Yes, I believe the SEC is the best conference, but I don’t believe that there should be seven SEC schools in the top 15. That’s absurd.
Ole Miss looks to have a good squad this year. However, wins over Boise State and Vanderbilt do not merit a No. 10 ranking. SEC affiliation is clearly boosting that number; don’t be surprised when the Rebels end up with four or five conference losses.
No. 2: These are 20-year-old kids playing sports.
One of the hardest lessons to learn in college football is that it’s just kids out there. Yes, there are pro coaches, pro athletic directors, pro reporters, big money apparel and TV deals, 80,000 seat stadiums, and pro gambling off in Las Vegas, but the players making the plays are young.
Sometimes you just have to let it go when a 19-year-old sophomore tight end drops a pass that would’ve been a first down, or when a cornerback gets burned on a deep route.
Thank god my face isn’t on Sportscenter when I have a typo in one of my columns.
When you look at the losses like Virginia Tech and USC’s last week, it is easy to see that teams coming off a big win didn’t practice as hard and weren’t focused to play against lesser-ranked teams.
The so-called trap game is a big deal in college football. It’s when a team playing an inferior opponent and comes in thinking they’ll roll over them, typically coming off a big win the week before, or looking forward to a big matchup the following week.
Upsets are always lurking in college football, that’s what makes it so fun. But don’t be shocked when ranked teams start dropping like flies in the weeks to come.
