College Football and Hockey Polls

College football is creating some new poll to replace the AP poll for its BCS standings. This poll won't be released until Sept 25th, four weeks into the season. The BCS is reportedly encouraging the AP and the Coaches to do the same for their polls, but neither have done so.

While college hockey does not use polls in the rankings for determing who makes the NCAA playoffs, it would be nice to see them hold off on the polls until several games have been played. This presents a different problem though since in football, everyone gets a few games in that is a contender (Ivies aren't in DI-A). But with college hockey, the Ivies aren't playing until nearly a month after everyone else.

One thing that hockey (at least USCHO) and football both get right, is they don't release the BCS rankings or the PWR until mid-season when the statistics are meaningful.

I know, I know, the polls are meaningless in hockey, except when it comes to public relations and recruiting.

The preseason and early season polls don't bother me much. Yes, it's kind of silly to rank teams week in and week out when you're basing almost everything on expectations and minimal actual results. One concern is that traditionally strong teams get high early rankings based on reputation even when they turn out to have poor seasons. But this doesn't matter much unless this bias persists in the polls throughout the year. it probably does in football, largely because of the low number of games and disconnected schedules. In hockey, it seems like late season polls have tended to track very well with the PWR over the last few years., which means they probably end up being less subjective.

Besides, having early season polls allows us to laugh at the pre-season top 5 team who tanks in December...

Won't somebody please think of the dalmatians?

New picture.

Nice, John.

That's a disturbing picture. Sort of "dalmatian porn."

The most disturbing "ceramic dalmation" picture I've ever seen is the menorah.



Beeeej

"We're number א! We're number א!"

Dammit, Greg, you just made me spit mortadella and provolone all over my monitor!!

Beeeej

How did this thread degenerate so quickly into this dog thing? Can't you guys find another thread???

[Q]Chris 02 Wrote:

How did this thread degenerate so quickly into this dog thing? Can't you guys find another thread??? [/q]

Hey, you called for the elimination of preseason polls. On the positive side, you've got my obligatory ceramic dalmatian joke out of the way and it's not even August yet.

Obligatory is right. You can't talk about the usefulness of polls (especially pre-season) without a ceramic dalmatian reference. It's not degeneration, it's college hockey tradition!

Ok, I wasn't aware of this tradition. Is it somewhere in the "newbie's guide to uscho"?

It was in the HOCKEY-L FAQ:

[elf.elynah.com]

As John noted it's a HOCKEY-L tradition, so it predates USCHO. Yes, from those dark ages before there was a World Wide Web...

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

As John noted it's a HOCKEY-L tradition, so it predates USCHO. Yes, from those dark ages before there was a World Wibe Web...[/q]

Wibe?

So I can't type.

[Q]jtwcornell91 Wrote:

It was in the HOCKEY-L FAQ:[/q]So, in other words, someplace that nobody actually looks anymore?

[Q]jmh30 Wrote:

jtwcornell91 Wrote:

It was in the HOCKEY-L FAQ:[/Q]
So, in other words, someplace that nobody actually looks anymore? [/q]

Hey, don't knock Hockey-L. After all, it's a place you could easily become the #1 poster of all time in a short period, instead of just being #6.

Oh, I'm back, baby!