Consumer Alert: Do Not Take The College Football AP Preseason Poll Too Seriously | Glenn Guilbeau

If you have ever witnessed an Associated Press poll voter actually vote, you may look at it differently.

One football poll voter actually blamed his local Sunday newspaper for his ejection from the poll years ago. Seems the paper did not have a late score from the night before involving a team he was considering for the poll right at deadline. He left the team out, and he was history.

I once saw three A.P. basketball poll voters in a media work room just before the vote deadline frantically asking one another what certain teams did that week for their polls. These are not scientific approaches, to say the least.

So, don't take the A.P. poll or most preseason predictions to the bank. And don't go crazy over your team's slot, which is happening as we speak on Twitter. Seems there are some who cannot believe the LSU Tigers are ranked No. 5 to the Alabama Crimson Tide's No. 4 in the latest Associated Press preseason prognostications that came out Monday.

This is because LSU beat Alabama last year, and LSU returns a much better quarterback in Jayden Daniels on paper than anyone the Crimson Tide has at the moment.

It should be noted, though, that Alabama is THE brand in college football, and much of all polls are based on brand and reputation.

Associated Press Poll Voting Has Natural Brand Bias

Alabama still has that, even though No. 4 is the Crimson Tide's lowest ranking in the A.P. preseason poll since it was No. 5 in 2009. Of course, it won the national championship that season.

Poll voters tend to jump on the bandwagon, too. Georgia just got its first No. 1 spot in the A.P. preseason poll since 2008 and second ever. Fact is it has less of a chance of winning the national championship this season than when it won it in 2021 and '22 when it was picked No. 5 and No. 3, respectively. This is because quarterback Stetson Bennett is gone.

LSU fans also need to remember what happened after their team's watershed, thrilling, 32-31 overtime win over Alabama.

The Tigers then barely beat an average Arkansas, 13-10, then a bad Texas A&M team blew them out, 38-23.

LSU's Poor Finish May Have Hurt It In Preseason Poll

The Tigers finished 10-4 and at No. 16 in the final A.P. poll of 2022-23. Alabama won its next four, including over No. 9 Kansas State, to finish 11-2 and No. 5. Much of the A.P. preseason poll is also based on the last poll of the previous season.

The main reason not to take the A.P. preseason poll as gospel is how often it is flat wrong.

Let's look at the A.P. preseason prognostications of 2022, for example. Of the 25 teams ranked, 15 finished unranked. So the A.P. voters got 10 right out of 25. Wow, that's 40 percent. And it's not like they just missed, either.

Texas A&M, for example, was ranked No. 6 entering the season last year. The Aggies finished 5-7 overall and 2-6 in the SEC. Other big misses were No. 9 Oklahoma, which finished unranked at 6-7 and 3-6 in the Big 12, and No. 10 Baylor, which also plummeted to 6-7 and 4-5 in the Big 12. Other ranked teams that finished out of the poll were Oklahoma State, North Carolina State, Michigan State and Miami. And get this the last eight entries in the 2022 preseason poll all finished out of the poll - Wisconsin, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Wake Forest, Cincinnati, Houston and BYU.

Associated Press Preseason Poll May Be A Curse

Maybe, A.P. stands for Always Punt. Some of the best teams in the country last season did not even make the preseason poll. TCU, for example, finished No. 2 after going 13-2 and reaching the national championship game. Tennessee enjoyed an 11-2 season and ended ranked No. 6. Penn State, Washington and Tulane finished No. 7-9 after no A.P. preseason rankings. Others not ranked that finished ranked were LSU at No. 16, Mississippi State at No. 20 and Texas at No. 25.

Hey, maybe it's better if your team is not ranked in the A.P. poll.

The A.P. preseason poll began in 1950. Since then, it has gotten the final No. 1 team right just 11 times. And that has happened only twice this century. USC started No. 1 and finished No. 1 in the 2004 season. Alabama is the last to do such a thing in the 2017 season.