Kirk Herbstreit defends having preseason rankings in college football

In recent years, many have complained about the importance placed on preseason rankings in college football. For example, Texas and Penn State opened this season at No. 1 and No. 2 in the polls. As we head into Week 9 of the season, the Longhorns sit at No. 22 while Penn State is unranked, lost four games in a row and fired its head coach.

During Thursday’s edition of ‘The Pat McAfee Show,’ Kirk Herbstreit defended preseason rankings. The dual-threat commentator/College GameDay panelist believes the rankings are good for preseason hype, but don’t hold any true impact once the games kick off.

“I’m a fan of preseason rankings,” Herbstreit said. “I’m a Reds fan. Baseball season is typically over for me, usually well before the Fourth of July, so I’m jonesing for some news and stuff to talk about. If the AP Poll comes out the second or third week in August and gets us excited about college football, I personally have no problem with it. I have the ability to look at a preseason poll and after five weeks of football, I don’t even know what happened in the preseason. I don’t give a sh*t about the preseason.”

Of the 10 teams ranked in the preseason Top 10 rankings, just five teams (Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon and Miami) remain. Indiana, which opened the season at No. 20, now sits at No. 2 in the country. Penn State (No. 2) and Clemson (No. 4) opened the season inside the top five and are both now unranked.

Herbstreit uses Penn State and BYU as examples of change in polls

“I’m watching football right now. I watch every single week and I have opinions that change,” Herbstreit continued. “‘That’s the team I thought they were’ or ‘they’re not the team I thought they were’. Penn State is an example of that, or a team like BYU. They lose their quarterback in the middle of camp and they have to find a freshman, Bear Bachmeier, who no one knew what he could do. All of a sudden, it’s like ‘wow, look at BYU!’ Am I gonna hold onto my preseason thoughts on week one rankings of BYU? No, no, of course not. I’m looking at BYU kicking ass and taking names and looking at what they’ve done over the past couple of weeks.

“I think it’s a lot of people having nothing else to talk about, so they talk about how unfair preseason polls are. I don’t have any issue with them at all. I think we all adjust accordingly to actually watching football. The teams that are overrated sink in the rankings, or they pop out. And I don’t think the committee gets caught up in preseason rankings at all, especially in November after eight or nine weeks of football.”

At the end of the day, preseason ranks are for nothing but discussion and popping big ratings early in the college football season. Since 2000, just two preseason No. 1 teams have gone on to win the National Championship (USC in 2004 and Alabama in 2017.)