Mike Celizic

The University of Michigan has been taking a worse beating in the newspapers and on the talk shows than it did on the field at the hands of Appalachian State.

The Wolverines deserve most of what they’re getting, but one distinction that many are calling a record shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. That is this business of Michigan being the highest ranked team ever to lose to a Division I-AA opponent.

As the game itself amply demonstrated, Michigan was not the No. 5 team in the country. As far as that goes, USC is not the No. 1 team in the country, LSU is not No. 2, West Virginia is not No. 3 and so on down the purely imaginary rankings with which we started the college football season.

This is a deep and fundamental flaw in a deeply and fundamentally flawed system college football insists on following against all reason to determine a national champion. You can not rank teams based on nothing other than the opinions — no matter how learned — of football writers, computers, talk-show hosts, college football experts, offshore gambling dens or anything else.

I’ve nothing against experts — alleged or otherwise — speculating about which are the best teams going into a season. We do that in every sport at every level, from the pros right on down to the more competitive Little Leagues.

Every publication and web page and sports show should predict away with abandon. It gets the discussion going. But they should do it independently and for entertainment purposes only.
Where I have a big problem is when we have an official poll of experts — writers, broadcasters, coaches and the like — before the season even begins.

Appalachian State 34, No. 5 Michigan 32 Former I-AA team 'shocked' it won Celizic: No more preseason polls, please Opinion: Michigan should be ashamed Mountaineers happy to dominate, in I-AA Small but speedy team sends message Michigan insists goals still within reach Carr will never live down this stunner LIVE VOTE: How surprising was this?   Discuss: Sound off on upset  |  Summary

The Associated Press three years ago removed its poll from the mechanism that decides the BCS standings on the grounds that it wasn’t fair to vote for the participants in a title game. Yet the AP merrily publishes a pre-season poll that establishes the line on the season.

The BCS has that much right. It doesn’t come out with its coaches’ poll until the second month of the season, the thinking being that you can’t tell how good anybody is until they’ve actually played some games. But the BCS poll takes its lead from the AP and other polls. If it didn’t the rankings wouldn’t more often than not mirror each other. For five or six weeks, the AP establishes the best teams based on the prejudices and preconceptions of voters.

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The voters aren’t dummies by any means. Most of them cover college football for a living and know a lot more about the game than you and I. But before the season has even started, they’re engaging in educated guesswork.

USC goes to the top of the heap automatically because that’s where they’ve been and they’ve got a great coach and the high-school kids they recruited are really good. Rutgers goes to bottom of the Top 20 because they should be happy to be mentioned at all. Notre Dame always gets votes because it’s Notre Dame and used to be good — 20 years ago. Big Ten teams get high rankings because the perception — not always born out in the bowl games — is that the Big Ten is as tough a conference as there is.

You can say that things sort themselves out over the course of the season, but they don’t.