AP32 NFL rankings ... what's the point?

I'm wondering if anyone uses these on a regular basis, and curious why AP would devote its resources to something so meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

At least they've apparently stopped putting the rankings in every NFL story, so I guess that's progress.

 

Readers love power rankings...

 

Readers don't love AP power rankings. And I don't love the AP crossing the line into subjective bullshit.

Just send the fucking gamers on time. That's what the members pay AP for.

 

The AP is working to squeeze out the middle man. Their "Top News" site isn't horrible, either: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/HOME?SITE=AP

 

I had to do power rankings and NFL picks every week when I covered the NFL and I would probably get more email about them than anything else I wrote that week. It was always frustrating to write a 60-inch takeout that would get 15 emails and then get 30 about the power rankings, but people read that stuff.

I'm not saying that I don't agree that it's complete fluff, but people like to consume complete fluff...

 

Still glad they took them out of the everyday story. I was dead determined to slice them out of every one.

 

They're in there so you can cut them out in the previews, gamers and capsules.

 

Same with the Twitter handle at the end of stories, though I suppose that's not much of an issue for print.

 

I think every site (ESPN, Fox, CBS and the rest) does rankings. To the extent that AP is a competitor to them, this makes sense.

Why in the hell anybody would care about ranking the 32 NFL teams on a week-to-week basis is a different story, but I think there is at least some market for it.

Sticking them in the actual stories as if they matter is ridiculous.

 

Agreed, Vers. Thing with that is, it's much easier, almost a reflex action, to swipe through the end of the story to remove what's behind the last word. You had to locate and delete the AP rankings; it was more of a nuisance.

And of course, the bottom line is that, like LTL alluded to, it was awfully pretentious of AP to think that their rankings were automatically germane to every NFL story just because they said they were.

 

This is it. AP wanted to compete with all the other "power rankings out there." But giving Berman a vote? All he does is repeat his TV sthick. I haven't been running this, or any other rankings, for a simple reason: space, baby.

But one question: To those wondering if this affects AP objectivity, how is this different from the college football or hoops polls?

 

Our papers runs them. Probably because one of our writers is a voter and we're an NFL city.