What college football ranking is your paper using?

[JayFarrar]

I was just wondering.
My metro this weekend dumped the AP rankings for the BCS since the AP doesn't have any input into the national championship and I was wondering if anyone else was already doing this or was going to.

 

[Rockbottom]

This is a good question ...

While we publish the BCS standings and avoid the Harris poll altogether, we acknowledge Podunk U's and Podunk U's opponents' place in the AP standings as "official". We also refer to Podunk U's place in the AP basketball rankings, and use Baseball America for Podunk U's hard-ball club.

We are a member of The Associated Press, which awards a national championship dating back to leather helmets. The AP is considered the "true" constant poll. The BCS is a moneymaking organization which hands out a neat crystal football after their made-for-TV affair.

My $0.02, adjusted for inflation.

rb

 

[shotglass]

To be honest, Jay, I see no excuse for any paper not giving all three. They're all part of the mix; they're all argued about.

 

[DyePack]

Whitlock's.

 

[shotglass]

Whitlock's.

Especially if you're a West Virginia media outlet.

 

[Chi City 81]

We publish all of the rankings on our Scoreboard page, but for gamers/previews/score overlays we use AP.

 

[BTExpress]

To be honest, Jay, I see no excuse for any paper not giving all three. They're all part of the mix; they're all argued about.

You need to RUN all three polls in the Monday paper.

But I hope you don't mean that all three should be used in a typical story.

"Joe Blow ran for 245 yards and three touchdowns to lead No. 8 (AP), No. 7 (USA Today), No. 11 Tennessee (BCS) to a 41-3 victory over South Carolina."

We use AP, and the reasoning is pretty clear.

They are the oldest. They are the most consistent (no tweaking from year to year). And chances are you are using AP copy . . . which will use AP rankings.

If you ask copy editors to change all rankings in an SEC roundup to BCS rankings or change their "How AP top 25 fared" chart to "How BCS top 25 fared", there will be (or should be) a revolt.

 

[Bruhman]

Even Gannett papers use AP rankings over The Flagship's coaches' poll.

It's like BTE said, all the copy you run use AP rankings, so it's crazy to try to convert all those gamers and features and mentions and "How the Top 25" fared, etc.

But you run all three polls.

 

[shotglass]

Oh, I'm sorry. If you're talking about references in a story, we go AP. Exclusively. I wouldn't list all three.

 

[JayFarrar]

This particular paper still runs all the polls, but when look at the Top 25 roundup or scoreboard, it reflects the BCS rankings and not the AP's.
So West Virginia might be No. 3 in the AP, but for Thursday's game, if these are the BCS rankings, it would be No. 4 West Virginia vs. No. 6 Louisville.
Personally, I think it is dumb and shortsighted. I mean what happens if you have a split national championship with the AP going one way and the the BCS going another? Never mind all the additional work it creates for the desk. It also creates confusion, people see the rankings on TV and already you have ABC/ESPN using one, CBS using another and the paper a third.
So if the mission of the BCS was to create clarity, it has failed that.

 

[slappy4428]

Whitlock's.

Especially if you're a West Virginia media outlet.

West Virginia's got media?
I thought Raby wrote for the other 49 states... :)

 

[Ledbetter]

This particular paper still runs all the polls, but when look at the Top 25 roundup or scoreboard, it reflects the BCS rankings and not the AP's.
So West Virginia might be No. 3 in the AP, but for Thursday's game, if these are the BCS rankings, it would be No. 4 West Virginia vs. No. 6 Louisville.
Personally, I think it is dumb and shortsighted. I mean what happens if you have a split national championship with the AP going one way and the the BCS going another? Never mind all the additional work it creates for the desk. It also creates confusion, people see the rankings on TV and already you have ABC/ESPN using one, CBS using another and the paper a third.
So if the mission of the BCS was to create clarity, it has failed that.

I noticed yesterday that CBS was using the coaches poll for the Georgia-Florida game -- it had No. 8 Florida vs. No. 25 Georgia. I don't know if CBS always uses the coaches' poll, but the matchup might not have looked as good on the promo if they used the AP numbers because Georgia wasn't ranked.

 

[HoopsMcCann]

This particular paper still runs all the polls, but when look at the Top 25 roundup or scoreboard, it reflects the BCS rankings and not the AP's.
So West Virginia might be No. 3 in the AP, but for Thursday's game, if these are the BCS rankings, it would be No. 4 West Virginia vs. No. 6 Louisville.
Personally, I think it is dumb and shortsighted. I mean what happens if you have a split national championship with the AP going one way and the the BCS going another? Never mind all the additional work it creates for the desk. It also creates confusion, people see the rankings on TV and already you have ABC/ESPN using one, CBS using another and the paper a third.
So if the mission of the BCS was to create clarity, it has failed that.

I noticed yesterday that CBS was using the coaches poll for the Georgia-Florida game -- it had No. 8 Florida vs. No. 25 Georgia. I don't know if CBS always uses the coaches' poll, but the matchup might not have looked as good on the promo if they used the AP numbers because Georgia wasn't ranked.

i noticed the same thing

and we use ap. 'cause we're part of the ap, and we don't want anything to do with gannett (our competition)

 

[GB-Hack]

We run AP, USA and the BCS, with the breakdown of the Harris, USA and Computers in the BCS. In copy, we use AP.

 

[Second Thoughts]

Could we now just get the TV networks to decide on one poll? I hate it when I'm flipping between games (CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox Sports, TBS, the old Jefferson Pilot) and see game scores with varied rankings for its participants. One place Texas is No. 3, another score crawl on another channel has it No. 5, so on and so on. Pick a poll people and all use it. Now that would be NCAA reform I could back. If you show a college game on TV, this is the poll you must use, just for consistency.

 

[Claws for Concern]

What's wrong with using a mix anyway? It's interesting when the polls differ. Of course, it's a talking point for sports talk radio.

 

[DyePack]

I actually thought Whitlock's poll was almost dead-on this week. I'd probably flip-flop Arkansas and Louisville, and I'm not sold on Texas being ahead of Michigan, but other than that I thought it was OK. Unless he's serious about Miami being No. 26.

 

[HejiraHenry]

This is a good question ...

While we publish the BCS standings and avoid the Harris poll altogether, we acknowledge Podunk U's and Podunk U's opponents' place in the AP standings as "official". We also refer to Podunk U's place in the AP basketball rankings, and use Baseball America for Podunk U's hard-ball club.

We are a member of The Associated Press, which awards a national championship dating back to leather helmets. The AP is considered the "true" constant poll. The BCS is a moneymaking organization which hands out a neat crystal football after their made-for-TV affair.

My $0.02, adjusted for inflation.

rb

Man law.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Mine's using the Dothan Poll ;D