[Warning – the following was written by a self-important blogger who believes he is smarter than the main stream media (MSM).  Hmmm… perhaps I should add this warning to all of my posts – or maybe all blogger posts]

Last night #1 Duke traveled to #6 Wake Forest and was beaten. Somehow, this was deemed (by the MSM) as an upset, even though just two weeks ago Wake Forest had topped the polls and would have been considered the favorite. Oh, that fickle MSM! How they build a story are around upsets. Obviously, I don’t think this was much of an upset, but it did remind me a question that has been in the back of my mind: why does anyone care about the polls?

I realize that many college basketball fans cross the sport lines in early January after the completion of the college football season. College football has never grasped my attention and one reason may be for its dependence on the polls. When two football teams finish the season unbeaten, it is up to the polls to determine the champion. Of course, non-BCS Utah went undefeated and won a hearty slap on the back (and no championship).  Well, that’s silly football, so let’s leave it at that.

Happily, basketball has a big tournament at the end to figure out who the champion is. While people may quibble with the Committee’s bubble teams, I think they generally choose the right at-large teams with little respect to the weekly poll. If a team is mentioned on a poll, they are usually good enough to make the tournament. According to Wikipedia, the AP began compiling a poll of the top 20 teams during the 1948-49 season. Wikipedia goes on to note, “In Division I men’s and women’s college basketball, the AP Poll is largely just a tool to compare schools throughout the season and spark debate, as it has no bearing on postseason play.” It should probably read “spark phony debates allows sports talk radio to fill up air time.” As you can probably guess from my muting of announcers, I don’t spend too much time listening to sports talk radio.

There are other ways to compare basketball teams and one frequently gets mentioned is the RPI (Rating Percentage Index). I don’t really get this one either. The RPI formula is ¼ your record plus ½ your opponents cumulative record plus ¼ your opponents’ opponents cumulative record. How does it makes sense that who you play is more important than who you beat? I understand that you don’t want to reward schools for playing a bunch of patsies, but I think way too much credit is given to schools who “schedule tough.” Aren’t these schedules put together years in advance? How can a school be given credit for scheduling Drake last year or Utah St this year. At this point, Northwestern has a high WPI than St. Mary’s. Northwestern is 11-7 and 3-5 in the Big 10 and St. Mary’s is 18-1 and 5-0 in the WCC. Northwestern has “good losses” against Butler, Stanford, Michigan State, and Purdue. Good losses?!?

In any case, you’ll notice that none of the professional sports have polls (although most major websites are glad to step into that void). They let the teams determine who is up and who is down on the field/court – just as it should be. I think it is time for the AP (and the rest of their MSM buddies who create polls) to step up and end their poll. But then again, what they would talk about without it?