Written by Aaron Torres | 23 August 2010

On Saturday morning, Twitter officially blew up. Thankfully, it had nothing to do with Justin Bieber.

Nope, Twitter was all a buzz Saturday, as the first AP Poll of the 2010 college football season was released. This two weeks before the start of the actual season.

And despite having no games, exhibitions or in some cases, open practices to base the rankings on, everyone still had an opinion. Why this team was ranked too high. Why that team was ranked too low. Why so and so had no chance of winning eight games, even if they adopted Rich Rodriguez's practice schedule. Basically, anyone who had two opposable thumbs and an internet connection, was sharing their thoughts on the AP Poll somewhere Saturday morning.

As for me, well I wasn't one of those people. Truth be told, I spent most of Saturday morning just thinking. Why people were so excited about the poll to begin with. What these rankings really even mean. And wondering if, (considering that we use these polls- although not the AP- as a barometer to determine who plays for the BCS National Championship) it's time to eliminate them in the pre-season altogether.

Now, like you, I'm a fan of the game. I get why we have the pre-season polls. They're fun. They give us something to talk about. Something to argue about. They're one more thing for Florida fans have to hold over the heads of Georgia fans.

But do we really need them in the pre-season? The NBA doesn't have them. Neither does the NFL, MLB or NHL. Yet we still find plenty to argue about before the start of those seasons. And we do it without some arbitrary rankings shaping our arguments.

And make no mistake, that's all these polls are, arbitrary.

Honestly, do you have any idea how these voters determine who goes where in their rankings? Because I don't. Is it based on who they think the best team is coming into the season? Who'll be the best team at the end? Some combination of talent, coaching and schedule? Who would win if every team played in an imaginary round-robin tournament on a neutral field? It's funny how these rankings have been around longer than Donald Trump's hairpiece, yet no one is quite sure how they're determined.

This year is no different. Let's take a look at the AP and USA Today polls, and pick a random team as a sample. Say, oh, I don't know, LSU.

LSU is a fascinating team. Les Miles is a good enough recruiter where the Tigers will never be overmatched based on pure talent. Yet coming into 2010, the Tigers are especially young , and play an especially brutal schedule: North Carolina and West Virginia out of conference, with games against Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Auburn (all "top 25" teams) in it. So with that, how do we go about ranking LSU? Based on how good they could be if everything breaks right? Or how good they probably will be, based on every factor, including talent, coaching and that tough schedule?

Well, the AP has them at No. 21 (More the "What they will be," argument), while the USA Today Poll has them at No. 16 ("What they could be"). That's a five spot difference in LSU's ranking between the two polls, yet depending on how you look at it, neither is wrong. Then again, we're not exactly sure what we should be looking at when analyzing the rankings.

Really though, the pre-season rankings don't matter, since they always end up being wrong- comically wrong- by the end of the season. Pre-season polls are kind of like your high school yearbook pictures come to life: Funny to look at in retrospect, but also something that you wish someone would destroy all records of.

Just for fun, let's look at last year's pre-season USA Today Coaches Poll. Remember, this poll was, and is a major factor in determining which teams play for the BCS National Championship. Kind of a big deal? Right?

Last year, Florida and Texas started at No.'s 1 and 2. Made sense at the time, and still more than justifiable even now, a year later. Two veteran quarterbacks. Two great defenses. No complaints with those two. After that though, is when things get a little goofy.

Coming in at No. 3 and No. 4 respectively were Oklahoma and USC, two teams which combined to finish the 2009 season 17-9. Now I know it's a bit of revisionist history to say those teams didn't belong, because clearly at the time, the thinking was that they did.

Then again, should we have been surprised that a team that had four new starters on the offensive line struggled to protect their superstar quarterback (Oklahoma) and ended up losing five games? Or that another which lost nine starters off their defense, both coordinators to Washington and started a true freshman at quarterback from Day 1, struggled to meet expectations? Because I'm thinking no. Oh, and don't forget, both those teams just so happened to be ranked ahead of Alabama to start the season. And we all know how the Crimson Tide's year played out.

Looking at the rest of the poll is just as funny. In retrospect of course.

Cal started the year ranked at No. 12, a full two spots ahead of Oregon. The two teams met on the field less than a month into the season, with the Ducks laying the beatdown on the Golden Bears, 42-3. It was the start of a run that led Oregon to a Pac-10 title, and Cal to a disappointing 8-5 season, one that saw them finish the year ranked fifth...in their own conference. Yet less than a month before they played, the college football voters were convinced that Cal was the better team. Hmm...

Ranked one spot behind Cal in the pre-season poll was Georgia, a team that we quickly found out was allergic to tackling on defense, and had a quarterback that was just as allergic to completing passes leading their offense. The 'Dawgs needed an Independence Bowl victory over Texas A&M to get to the same 8-5 record as the team ranked ahead of them to start the season. Then again, at least Georgia played in a bowl game, which is more than pre-season No. 23 Notre Dame could say.

And when the voters picked Ole Miss at No. 10, I bet they didn't think the Rebels would finish 4-4 in the SEC, which is exactly how Ole Miss ended up. Don't feel bad though Rebs fans, No. 19 Florida State and No. 20 North Carolina finished with ACC play with the same record.

Of course like everything else, there are two sides to the story. The pollsters ranked Boise at No. 16 and TCU at No. 17, and then watched the two combine to lose ZERO regular season games from September to December. The duo might have finished all of 2009 undefeated, you know, if they hadn't played each other in the Fiesta Bowl.

Iowa started the year at No. 21, a full 13 spots ahead of Penn State, which they beat in Happy Valley less than a month into the season. Had it not been for an injury to Ricky Stanzi, the Hawkeyes may have gone on to win the Big 10, and maybe played for a National Championship.

Cincinnati wasn't in the initial pre-season top 25, yet finished the regular season undefeated. Their Big East counterparts at Pittsburgh weren't ranked in August either, yet were 10-3 by the beginning of January. Same with Wisconsin. As for Miami, they were unranked in the pre-season, then went out and won nine games, including three in the first month over pre-season top 25 teams. Not too shabby, huh? Staying in the ACC, Clemson won eight games and the Atlantic Division title, while starting the year unranked too.

In theory of course, none of this would matter, except, again, these polls...determine who plays for the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!! Meaning that a voter mis-step in August, can ultimately make 15 weeks worth of regular season games meaningless.

Well all know the most egregious example of this from back in 2004, when USC, Oklahoma and Auburn did the unthinkable, and finished the regular season undefeated. Great story right? In any other sport it might have been. But in college football, it was just another black eye, as USC beat Oklahoma in a lopsided Orange Bowl, while Auburn never got a chance at either, winning the Sugar Bowl over Virginia Tech.

So why did Auburn never get that chance? Simply because of bad circumstance. USC and Oklahoma started the year No. 1 and No. 2, never lost and stayed there through the end of the season. Auburn started the year ranked No. 17 in the AP (which at the time had a stake in the BCS voting) and No. 18 in the USA Today, and could never make up the lost ground. Now I'm not a good enough college football historian to say that things could have played out differently without pre-season polls, but who knows. Without them, maybe Auburn would have gotten to the big game, and maybe they woouldn't have. But at least, the two teams selected would have been based a little more on merit, then a voter's mid-August hunch.

Which brings us to this year, and to the fear that a similar scenario could play out. The top five of the USA Today poll is as follows: Alabama, Ohio State, Florida, Texas and Boise State. Let's put aside the fact that Boise State being ranked behind Texas and Florida is ludicrous, considering that the two teams directly in front of them combined to lose roughly 392 players to the NFL Draft, while Boise returns 21 starters. Or that those two teams enter 2010 with quarterbacks greener than a head of fresh lettuce, while Boise has Heisman contender Kellen Moore under center. Again, forget that.

Florida and Texas won't finish undefeated, but for the sake of this argument, let's say that Alabama, Ohio State and Boise all do.

If that happens, it's impossible to say in August who'll be most deserving of those two invitations to the BCS Championship Game in December, yet at the same time, it likely won't matter. It seems all but assured right now, in the last week of August, that the Tide and the Buckeyes will be playing for the title if all three finish the year unblemished. And it'll only because Alabama and Ohio State are starting the year ranked No. 1 and No. 2.

But is it fair? Of course not.

What if Boise goes out and beats Virginia Tech by two touchdowns on Labor Day, and then goes and beats down the rest of their schedule by four touchdowns apiece? Not likely to happen, but not impossible, right? Then for the sake of the argument, say Ohio State wins three games on last minute field goals, and Alabama wins the SEC Championship Game on a blown call in the fourth quarter. Not realistic, but still. At that point, who's to say Boise wouldn't deserve a shot at the title? Of course they won't get in, because like Auburn, they started the season ranked too far behind those two teams.

So with that, let's go back to the originally stated question: With the polls determining (in part) which teams teams play for the title, would it be the worst thing in the world to just skip the pre-season rankings all together? Say the first poll wasn't released until the first week of October. What exactly would we miss out on? A few water cooler debates, but what else? Anything?

At the same time, when the rankings did come out, each team would have 3-4 games that voters could actually base those rankings on.

By then we'd know how John Brantley and Garrett Gilbert were adjusting to being starting quarterbacks at prime-time programs, and whether their teams deserved to be in the top five. We'd know whether Terrelle Pryor's Rose Bowl performance was a total fluke, or the first step toward a 2010 Heisman. We'd know if Alabama actually had replacements for Rolando McClain, Javier Arenas and Terrence Cody off their National Championship defense. And we'd know whether Boise had justified all the pre-season hype and beaten Virginia Tech. Or whether they were fools gold.

Again though, at least we'd know something, rather than basing the rankings on some combination of opinion, conjecture and projection. The way things stand now, all that Alabama and Ohio State have to do to prove they're better than Boise (or Texas, TCU or anyone else for that matter), is go out and win every game on their schedule. Regardless of how they do it.

Therefore, I think it's time to eliminate the pre-season polls. We don't need them in any other sport, and we don't need them in this sport, where they do so much- too much- to determine the fate and the flow of the season.

Maybe it'll happen, but realistically it won't. Until then I'll dream of simpler August. One that's not full of trying to fit a season's worth of college football guesses into a neat little 25 team poll, but instead worrying about the important things in life.

Like hoping that Justin Bieber doesn't do anything to ruin a perfectly good Saturday morning on Twitter.

(Love the article? Hate it? Disagree with something Aaron said? Let him know by commenting below or e-mailing him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Also, for his take on all things sports and updates on all his articles, be sure to follow Aaron on Twitter @Aaron_Torres, Facebook.com/AaronTorresSports and by downloading his APP for FREE for your iPhone or Android)