Problems with the AP

Here are four of the recommendations that the Associated Press sends to its voters regarding how to vote in the football poll:

* Base your vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation.

* Avoid regional bias, for or against. Your local team does not deserve any special handling when it comes to your ballot.

* Pay attention to head-to-head results and

* Don’t hesitate to make significant changes in your ballot from week to week. There’s no rule against jumping the 16th-ranked team over the eighth-ranked team, if No. 16 is coming off a big victory and No. 8 just lost 52-6 to a so-so team.

In my ranking scheme, I try as hard as I can to adhere to these principles.  I realize that I now have Oregon State and Oregon in my top 3, but that is because they are the two remaining undefeated teams in the conference that has had the most impressive non-conference schedule so far, including victories over the defending Big Ten champion and the defending Big 12 champion (and a stupendous loss to the defending SEC champion!).

Unfortunately, it does not seem that the official AP voters care about these principles.  

Let us look at #3, head-to-head results.

The AP now has the following rankings:

13) USC (3-1)
14) Oregon State (3-0)
18) Stanford (3-1)
21) Nebraska (4-1)
23) Washington (3-1)
25) UCLA (4-1)

Now, if you will kindly remember the following "head-to-head results":

UCLA defeated Nebraska 36-30.
Stanford defeated USC 21-14.
Oregon State defeated UCLA 27-20.
Washington defeated Stanford 17-13. 

Therefore, using simple logic, and following the AP's own guidelines, we can conclude the following:

Oregon State > UCLA > Nebraska   and

Washington > Stanford > USC  

So our ballot, if we were good and honest people, would resemble something more like:

a) Oregon State
b1) UCLA
b2) Washington
c1) Nebraska
c2) Stanford
d) USC

(Basically, you could swap UCLA and Washington, and you could swap Nebraska and Stanford, which would actually be a useful and interesting application of voters' beliefs about which teams were better.  Based on their votes, we should assume that they believe that Stanford would defeat Nebraska, and that Washington would defeat UCLA.  Which is fine; debatable, but fine.)


Unfortunately, AP voters tend to totally disregard the rules, and vote for whomever they think ought to be better, not for who has proved it on the field.  

And so we have USC five spots ahead of Stanford.
And we have Stanford five spots ahead of Washington.
And Nebraska four spots ahead of UCLA. 

Base your vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation.