Texas probably isn’t the No. 4 team, not based on its first game, anyway. But if the Longhorns drop a tough game and win the rest, they’ll end the season with a higher ranking than a team that has the same record but began the year with a lower ranking.

That’s inevitable. If I decide at the beginning of the year that one team is better than another, I’m going to keep it that way as long as the results allow me to.

And that’s not fair. If we’re going to vote for a champion, the least we can do is wait to see how good teams actually are before we take the first official poll. Michigan’s going to probably stay in the Top 20 simply because it started the season ranked No. 5. But if we waited five weeks, even if the Wolverines didn’t have another loss, they’d be lucky to make the list. How can they when they’ve lost to Appalachian State?

In no other sport are there pre-season rankings that actually go a long way toward determining which teams get to play for the championship at the end of the season. In every professional sport, every team starts out dead even.

No matter how many analysts decide the Yankees are the best team in the American League, on Opening Day they’re no better than Tampa Bay. And on the last day of the season, they are whatever their record says they are.

It’s the same in pro football. It doesn’t matter what Indianapolis’ pre-season ranking is the day the NFL season begins. If they want to win a title, they have to do it the old-fashioned way; they have to win it on the field.

But in college football, you aren’t entirely what your record says you are.

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Instead, you are what your pre-season ranking said you would be. Last year, Rutgers wasn’t ranked before the season began, then nearly pulled off an undefeated season. But it took the Scarlet Knights forever to work their way up the rankings, and, at season’s end, they weren’t even in the discussion as a title candidate. But Ohio State came in as a favorite of the voters and used that to get to the championship game, which it had no business being in.

Holding off for at least a month before taking the first poll won’t make the system the best ever invented. But the polls are so enormously important to a system that refuses to have a legitimate playoff that it’s grossly unfair to set up the championship game before anyone’s even played their first game.

Appalachian State did us the favor of showing just how dumb pre-season rankings are. The AP did the right thing once by pulling out of the BCS system. It’s time to do it again by refusing to vote for the top teams until at least the first week of October.