Timing the Release of the Weekly Polls...

Why do the weekly rankings for college football come out on Sundays? I have read several times in stories from AP voters such as Stewart Mandel and Pat Forde about the struggle to submit their rankings in a timely fashion, oftentimes after not having had a chance to fully digest or review the games of teams that would be affected by the day’s results. With what I imagine to be only a limited window in which the only recourse is to review box scores or catch highlights of games, all while likely on location at the site of one of the weekend’s marquee matchups, fully informed decisions would appear to be difficult.

While the writers’ votes in the AP poll do not impact the BCS standings, the coaches’ votes in the USA Today poll do have an impact. In this case, coaches would seem to stand at even more of a disadvantage as their professional obligations do not necessarily rest with the evaluation of the top 25 teams in the land.

This would seem to cause poll voters to continue to vote for rankings that place teams based more on reputation and perception than actual results. By releasing the poll results on a Monday or Tuesday, college football would not only allow its voters (or, in the case of many coaches, their surrogates, such as sports information directors) to more responsibly and thoroughly evaluate the weekend’s results while simultaneously allowing for the rankings to emerge from the shadow of the NFL’s slate of Sunday games. This would likely still provide the NCAA time to input the poll results into their computers for the computation of the official BCS standings, released each Tuesday. This would seem to pass the common sense test, which may make it even more difficult for the NCAA to see it as an alternative.

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