Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham stands on the sideline during the first half of the Big 12 Conference football championship game against Iowa State in Arlington, Texas, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. The 2024 Big 12 preseason media poll projected the Sun Devils to finish last.
Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham stands on the sideline during the first half of the Big 12 Conference football championship game against Iowa State in Arlington, Texas, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. The 2024 Big 12 preseason media poll projected the Sun Devils to finish last.
A report from On3 says the Big 12 will dispense with its preseason football poll. Has common sense finally broken out in this corner of college athletics?
Once upon a time, preseason polls had some solid ground upon which to stand. The bulk of rosters returned each year, progress in learning systems and personal improvement could be taken into account and enough spring practices were viewable to help make some of the prognostications have some hope of being close to on target.
Now, with unfettered player movement, rosters almost entirely turning over, mostly closed sessions and “development†having gone the way of leather helmets, picking a preseason pecking order might be just as well served by drawing names out of a hat.
That, along with the wish of schools to not have to answer questions or fight the perception of being a basement-dweller, has led the Big 12 Conference to do away with its preseason media poll. Expectations are that the same decision will apply to other sports the league sponsors.
This might be viewed as a knee-jerk reaction to last year’s poll, in which Arizona State was selected dead last. The Sun Devils turned that on its head by winning the conference championship, and while that might have reflected negatively on the voters in the poll, it also created a number of false narratives that were followed like red herrings.
Why didn’t the top teams in the poll win? Should the coach be fired? The ridiculousness never stopped.
In addition to dispensing with some of that malarkey, scrapping the preseason poll might help, at least some, in dispensing with the preconceived notions that those polls can have with top-25 selections, and even CFP rankings.
Time and again, teams that weren’t picked for a high spot in preseason polling have had to claw their way up the polling ladder, and one hiccup often serves to knock them back down. That compares to some of the teams that are voted high early on, who almost always seem to get a couple of passes when they encounter losses.
Of course, this won’t totally stem the tide. National media outlets will still offer selections, and just about anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can also offer their selected standings. Just maybe, though, could this be the start of a time in which game results matter more than votes on an e-form?
The Big 12 joins the Big Ten in doing away with the team polling, and while preseason all-league selections will continue to be made, hopes are that the benefits of moving away from preseason polls become apparent to more leagues.
